“Iru, my lord,” came her tinkling, honeyed tones, “let us not quarrel. The feast is ready.”
Again she clapped, and serving-girls came through the curtained door. The platters they bore carried an astonishing variety of foods. Fresh dates. Scarlet, stoneless pomegranates. Huge purple grapes in clusters. Tiny, fragrant, hulled nuts, unfamiliar to Price. Roast meat. Spiced sweet-cakes, of many shapes and flavors. Several varieties of cheese. A diversity of wines, in tall flagons, thin and syrupy-thick, sweet and sour, red and white and purple.
Price watched Vekyra, saw that she made a mere pretense of eating. She selected some morsel from each proffered platter; but those morsels seldom went to her mouth, she no more than sipped the wine. He wondered if she required ordinary food. Perhaps the golden beings needed only to breathe the yellow mist in order to live.
He resolved to eat and drink as sparingly as Vekyra. An intuitive feeling warned him that some crisis was approaching; he determined not to drug himself with food. Like her, he merely sipped and tasted, until the platters came no more.
He saw annoyed vexation in Vekyra’s eyes, and was glad of his abstinence.
“Let us have music,” she whispered, at length, and clapped again.
Soft strains welled up from hidden players, unfamiliar, oddly stirring. Low, dull, insistent, barbaric as jungle tomtoms.
“Now that you have dined”—and the tawny, oblique eyes darted Price a malicious glance—”I shall dance for you.”
She glided out upon a rug of dull blue and somber crimson and stopped there, swaying through the slow measures of an archaic dance. Through golden lashes her slanted eyes watched Price, mystic, enigmatic.
He forced his gaze away for a moment, tried to get a grip upon himself. He felt that a spell of evil was being deliberately woven about him.
It all seemed a play staged to influence him. The long, strange hall, dim in the colored, eldritch light of flaring cressets, filled with heady perfume. The weird, sobbing music, and Vekyra dancing, slim and elfish in her crimson tunic, red-golden hair loose like a net to snare him.
She began to sing a strange, simple song:
Red flames dance, jungle flames—dance and call.
Drums throb deep, jungle drums—throb and call.
Moon glows white, jungle moon—glows and calls.
Swift heart throbs, heart of mine—throbs like drum.
Hot blood flows, blood of mine—flows like flame.
Passion glows, in my breast—glows like moon.
Moon grows dim; red flames sink; drum is still.
Yet I wait—ever wait—for my love.
Ages pass; earth grows old—still I wait.
Violet and green, the cressets flared, casting fantastic shadows upon gold and marble walls. Mysterious gloom filled the corners of the hall, and low music wailed, as Vekyra writhed and swayed and sang. The cool incense in the air was like a wine, intoxicating.
The music quickened suddenly. Vekyra spun with it, light and graceful as a dancing flame. And as she danced she stripped the crimson tunic from her bright and splendid body, flung it down and whirled over it.
The music died to far-off, haunting strains, and she came toward Price. Nearly nude. Like a statue in pale gold, come to life and walking. Her tawny-greenish eyes were hot with passion.
She flung herself down beside Price, threw her bare arms around him. Desire rose in him instantly, like a burning wind. Involuntarily, he slipped an arm around her delicately molded shoulders, drew her throbbing body to him. She lifted a pale, oval face, oblique eyes wild, aflame with passionate exultation.
Price stared for a moment into her mad, greenish eyes, and felt a sudden horror of her. He turned his face away from her seeking lips, tried to push her from him. Her bare yellow arms clung to him with amazing strength. She drew him against her body, and called out.
A slave-girl ran into the room with a crystal bowl of purple wine.
“Drink, Lord Iru,” Vekyra whispered, as Price struggled in her golden arms. “Drink and forget.”
She clung to him, and the girl forced the wine against his lips.
He did not want to strike a woman… but she was not a woman, this golden vampire.
Snatching one arm free, he knocked the wine to the floor, where it spread like blood. Vekyra still clung to him, and he drove his fist at her painted lips.
She flung him back at the couch, and hell was in her eyes.
“You strike Vekyra?” she hissed. “Me? Vekyra? Queen of Anz and priestess of the snake?”
Price scrambled to his feet and strode toward the curtained entrance.
“Go!” she flared at him. “And ask no mercy of Vekyra, for yourself—or the wretched slave you love!”
Deliberately, Price paced the length of the hall. He was almost at the curtained entrance when Vekyra called after him:
“Iru! Stay, Lord Iru!”
He looked back, saw her running after him across the rich rugs, pale and beautiful in the dim, flaring lights of green and violet. He dropped the curtain, heard beyond it her choked cry of rage and hate.
As he hastened along the splendid arcade to his own apartment in the moonlit palace, Price quoted uncomfortably:
“Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned!”
26. VEKYRA’S VENGEANCE
EVEN THEN, Price was far from understanding the subtlety of Vekyra’s nature. As he strode back to his room, escorted by the armed girls, and exchanged the resplendent ceremonial garments for his own clothing, which she had returned, he was expecting her destroying fury to fall upon him at any instant. He was certain that the infuriated woman would seek some revenge, but he failed to anticipate its nature.
The girls, with their jambiyahs, had retired to the doorway of his room. The change of clothing completed, he donned the linked yellow mail of Iru, and lay down on the bed with the ancient king’s oval buckler and the golden ax beside him.
He did not sleep. At any instant he expected something to happen. Just what course Vekyra’s revenge would take, he did not know. Would she come herself to murder him? Send the tiger in after him? Or merely return him to Malikar?
A full moon was shining, but the broad, unglazed windows of his room faced southwest; the silvery light did not enter them. The guards in the doorway had a torch, but it flickered low, presently hissed and went out. Price listened to the girls. They talked, for a time, in low tones. Then their voices ceased. He heard deep breathing, as if some of them were sleeping.
Abruptly, he remembered his promise to meet the old sheikh at midnight, in the middle court. He had no great hope that anything would come of it. But at any rate it would be an interesting way to pass a few hours of the night. And if he could get outside the castle, free to use the golden ax again…
The girls in the doorway did not stir as he rose silently from the bed and crossed the dark room to the unglazed windows. Softly he glided over the sill, let himself down by his arms, and dropped quietly upon the gravel walk. There was no alarm; it was amazingly simple.
The castle was strangely bright. Moonlight reverberated from bright marble and polished gold. It filled the courts and colonnades with silent, ghostly splendor.
A man could not have hidden easily in that moonlight. But there seemed to be no one about. Price slipped along sleeping paths, until he reached the middle court. That, too, was empty, uncannily still in moon-drenched wonder.
He felt almost foolish for coming here at all; it was ridiculous to trust in the old Bedouin nakhawilah to plan his escape. Price was uncertain whether to return to his room or to make a suicidal attempt to scale the castle walls and climb down the precipices.
“You, Effendi?” whispered Fouad, from the shadows of a mass of shrubbery.
Price moved toward him. The old Arab came into the moonlight. He was armed with a long javelin. The woman who had been his guard was beside him, jambiyah at her waist and a coil of rope on her arm.
“Wallah, Sidi,” muttered the sheikh. “I am glad you
came! A bad place this is, by moonlight. I like not the golden woman-djinni.”
“Come now, silently,” murmured the girl.
She led the way along a shadowed arcade of palms to the eastern wall of the castle. Hanging down the basalt barrier was a rope ladder, just to northward of one of the towers that studded the wall.
“Up that,” the girl whispered. “Make no sound. Wait in the shadow of the tower.”
Price climbed up, Fouad after him. The girl followed, carrying her rope. They stood on the top of the wall, six feet wide. On one side was Verl, argent, glorious in the moonlight; on the other, a half-mile of sheer space, above lava plains that were grim desolation.
The girl fastened the end of her rope to the metal hooks that held the rope ladder, then dropped it over the outer face of the wall.
“Slip down, quickly,” she hissed. “You will find a path, cut in the rock. No noise. And quickly, before the mistress wakes.”
Fouad advanced upon the girl, as if to embrace her. She shrugged impatiently, pushed him toward the rope. He seized it, vanished over the wall. Price waited until it went slack.
He was troubled. This escape seemed too easy. Something was wrong, but just what, he could not guess.
He followed down the rope, letting it slip through his hands. Fouad’s hands reached up and caught him, guided him to a narrow ledge. He released the rope. It was whisked swiftly upward.
The ledge sloped downward, to the right, a path two feet wide, cut in the rock. It was smooth; the granite projected out above it. Price hastened away along it, Fouad following.
Still he was worried about the escape. It had been too simple. But on one point he was relieved. He was outside the castle. His promise no longer held him from using the golden ax.
The path zigzagged back and forth across the east face of the mountain. Above a steep, smooth slope, they came to the end of it, and half climbed, half slid down to the lava plain.
Side by side, they ran away from the mountain.
“Wallah, Effendi,” gasped Fouad. “We’ll be in El Yerim by dawn.”
When they were a mile away, Price looked back. The black mass of the mountain loomed behind them, grim and threatening. He saw the yellow square of the gates where he had once vainly demanded admission. Far above loomed the castle, a glowing opalescent coronal under the moon.
They went on, running. Price was afraid. Still he did not understand the escape. Something about it was not as it should be.
“Ya Allah!” Fouad screamed suddenly, when they were perhaps two miles across the lava flows, in the direction of the oasis. His voice was strained and distorted with fear.
He was looking back. Price turned, and scanned the ominous black pile of the mountain, across moon-flooded desert. The golden square had vanished. The tunnel-gates were open!
Then he saw the tiger, a golden monster, running across the lava fields, the howdah on its back. Already it had come half a mile. He could make out Vekyra’s tiny figure upon the swaying beast.
He knew, then, why the escape had been so simple and easy. And he understood the subtle horror of Vekyra’s vengeance. All this was her planning. A trap! Fouad had not impressed his jailer as much as he supposed; no wonder she had been impatient to start him down the rope.
All this had been planned, even before he had won Vekyra’s wrath. She had spared him, for the moment, because she had the subtle snare of revenge already set and baited.
“Ya Allah! Ya gharati! [Oh God! Oh, my calamity!]” Fouad was howling. “The djinni but tricks us to hunt us again!”
His voice went hoarse and died in his beard. Over the desert, through the still golden rain of moonlight, wailed the ululant squall of the hunting tiger.
27. THE CAMP IN THE WADI
PRICE AND THE OLD BEDOUIN both ran when the golden tiger screamed. In the thin, uncanny ululation was some quality that shattered the nerves and woke blind, atavistic terrors. They were no longer reasoning beings. That squalling cry, with all that it meant, made them mere frightened animals.
Together they ran across the livid, moon-washed lava flows, nerved by fear to almost superhuman exertions. When Price came to himself, red pain seared his laboring lungs; every breath had become a sobbing gasp. Hot sweat drenched him; the night was suddenly oppressive; his limbs were stiff and leaden.
He made himself stop. The oasis was a dozen miles away; to reach it ahead of the tiger was an obvious impossibility. The mad flight was gaining him nothing; it was serving only to increase Vekyra’s pleasure in her diabolically planned revenge.
Price dropped, panting, on his stomach behind a jagged knob of black lava. Fouad ran on, howling out at every leap a frantic appeal to Allah and his prophet.
From the shadow of the rock, Price looked back across the dark, barren, argent-lit plain, toward the mountain, watched the vague yellow form, appearing and dissolving in the ghostly mantle of the moonlight. Zor, the golden tiger; Vekyra riding on his trail.
He lay quiet, fondling the helve of the golden ax. It was madness, of course, to think of battling the elephantine tiger, but no more suicidal than flight; and he always felt better fighting than running.
He watched the tiger running with smooth, effortless strength, as if it floated upon the waves of white moonlight. It came straight toward him, then turned a little. He heard Vekyra’s triumphant view-halloo, a pealing silver shout.
She had seen him. No. It must be Fouad. In the shadow of the rock, he must be yet invisible to her. But she would certainly discover him as she came nearer. And the great yellow cat, if it trailed by scent—
His thought was broken off by a sudden rattle of rifle-fire, from the direction Fouad had taken. Bullets hummed and whined above his head, singing toward the tiger.
The running beast stopped suddenly, stood motionless. It was not five hundred yards away. Price could see the howdah, and Vekyra sitting in it. She stood up, looked for a moment after Fouad, with the bullets whistling about her.
Then she crouched low; the tiger turned and fled. The yellow bulk of it paused for an instant upon a distant ridge; then it seemed to melt away in the moonlight.
Price got to his feet, swearing in astonished relief. The abrupt reaction to his extreme nervous tension of a few moments before made him feel curiously weak and shaken. He had an odd desire to laugh.
Cunning as Vekyra’s plot had been, to raise the hopes of her victims by allowing them to make that miraculous escape, then to run them down upon the tiger, she had bungled it. She had actually given them the freedom with which she had planned to tantalize them.
Walking in the direction Fouad had fled, Price came soon in view of half a dozen men, rifles in hand, standing about the old Arab. One of them challenged him; he shouted out his name, and old Sam Sorrows, the rangy, long-faced Kansan, came hastening to meet him.
“Howdy, Mr. Durand,” he called, surprised. And when he was nearer: “What’s it all about, anyhow?”
“The lady on the tiger was out for a bit of sport. Hunting, with Fouad and me for the game. Lucky we ran into you.”
“Maybe.” Sam Sorrows lowered his voice to a whisper. “Better keep an eye peeled for that half-breed de Castro, Mr. Durand. The skunk hasn’t actually loved you, ever since you took that girl out of his yellow hands. Say, have you found out anything—”
“Yes, Sam, I saw her. Down in the mountain. That golden devil, Malikar—he’s turning her to gold. But about de Castro?”
“Well, he doesn’t worship the ground you walk on. And the men are pretty well with him. And—well, you see—that is to say—”
The old man paused, doubtful, fumbling his Lebel in the moonlight.
“What is it, Sam?”
“Well, Mr. Durand, you see—anyhow, we saw you yesterday, in the mirage.”
“Oh!” Price recalled his weird experience in the hall of illusion. “What of it?”
“Well, sir, I don’t like to say it. But it was plain to see you and the yellow woman were spying on us. Looked li
ke she was on pretty good terms with you. The men were saying—”
“Saying what?” Price prompted him again.
“Of course I don’t doubt you, Mr. Durand.” Price was shocked to note the faintest uncertainty in the old man’s tones, as if he were not quite convinced. “But the men think you’ve sold us out. De Castro was making some unpleasant remarks about what would happen if we got hold of you again. Thought I’d put you on guard.”
“Thanks, Sam.” Price squeezed his gnarled hand.
“You’ll have to talk, sir. It looks queer, you happening to run into us this way, with the woman making out to chase you. The men will think you planned the thing, to get back in camp, and find out what we’re planning.”
“But Fouad was with me, too.”
“What does he amount to?” The old Kansan turned back toward the others. “Good luck, sir. Remember, I’m for you.”
In a shallow wadi beyond the ridge Price found a small, fireless camp. There were no tents. The white men, an even score of them, were mostly sprawled or squatting about the camel packs. Fouad’s Arabs, now numbering a little over thirty, were gathered in a clamoring group about their new-returned sheikh. Close about were the dromedaries, kneeling or awkwardly sprawling. And the gray, silent bulk of the tank.
Jacob Garth came to meet Price, as Sam Sorrows walked with him past the little group of sentinels on the ridge. A huge, gross man, his fat head bared to the night breeze, his topi slung about his neck.
“Don’t trust him too far,” the lanky Kansan whispered again. “He’ll do anything to humor de Castro and the men—till he gets the gold in his own fat hands!”
The man was near; Price did not reply.
“So you’re back again, Durand?” boomed Garth’s voice, sonorous and emotionless as ever.
“Yes.”
“Doesn’t it occur to you that you have been deserting and appearing again rather too often to be convincing?”
“I think not. I can explain.”
“You can explain why we saw you in the mirage yesterday morning? And on evidently intimate terms with the golden woman—whom you now pretend to be running away from?”
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