The Muse and Other Stories of History, Mystery, and Myth

by Lillian Stewart Carl

  “What is a guard in the zenana but a bit of furniture, standing by silently and overhearing much, for the Begoom’s aseels are knowing many things, but how to hold their tongues is not one of them.”

  “Well then.” Macfarlane saluted her with his dirk and sheathed it. “My name is Sandy Macfarlane.”

  Her glance noted that he kept his broadsword at the ready. Contemptuously, she tucked her own weapons behind her belt and turned her back, saying over her shoulder, “I am Yasmina. Come with me, if you have the courage.”

  Snorting his indignation at that jibe, Macfarlane settled his broadsword at his burly flank and his bonnet on his red hair. He tiptoed across the stones of the courtyard at Yasmina’s silent heels, thanking providence for presenting him with this opportunity, and congratulating himself for seizing it. Still, in the back of his mind skulked the vague memory of a name heard in the native bazaar, of a rumor of baha mati, black magic . . .

  The dark memory was gone, eclipsed by sparkle of diamonds in that same bazaar, gems glinting so brightly with every color of the rainbow that his eyes were blinded by them. Until only a few years before, the Dekkani mines had produced all the diamonds known to and coveted by man. While Jahan Begoom, for all her exotic beauty, was untouchable, the diamonds of Golkonda were not. Perhaps in helping Yasmina guard the Eyes of the Tiger, a few small jewels, less than baubles, insignificant trinkets to the Nizam, could find their way into his purse.

  The virago Yasmina led the way through dark passages, along pools that shimmered in the starlight, past pavilions laden with silk cushions, her eyes surely those of the cat her movements so resembled. Along with lamplight and laughter, Macfarlane caught the scents of lamb biryani and oranges, garam masala and roses. Then, suddenly, Yasmina stepped out into a staircase hewn roughly from the living rock.

  Macfarlane blinked owlishly. He knew where they were. Above him rose the craggy citadel of Golkonda, palaces wedged between rounded outcrops of bedrock. Below him, beyond walls undulating with hemispherical crenelations, lay the houses and gardens of the new city of Hyderabad.

  The milky orb of a full moon shed a blue radiance over the rosy glow of lamps and cressets and made the thin but pungent pall of smoke hanging over the city glow as with witchlight. In the distance a Mahometan priest wailed the call to prayer. The scene that seemed exotic during the daylight hours now, at night, from this place, seemed to Macfarlane to be utterly and ominously alien. A cold finger traced down his spine, but still he could not place that elusive memory, one that gathered at the edges of his mind like storm clouds on the horizon.

  In the moonlight he could see Yasmina’s face clearly, the arched brows, high cheekbones, full lips that would have been beautiful had they been soft. Her body was ill-defined by her loose clothing, but he suspected she was never as ripely plump as the nautch dancers in the bazaar.

  She gestured toward a rough-hewn staircase that climbed the flank of the hill in serpentine curves. “Up, to the Tana Shahi ki Gaddi.”

  “The treasury is within the Durbar Hall?” Macfarlane lifted his gaze toward the ghostly white building at the pinnacle of the fortress, its towers like skeletal arms raised in supplication toward the indifferent heavens. But Yasmina bounded away up the steps without answering, leaving Macfarlane to stumble, growl at himself, and follow her up the long uneven flight to the open square before the Hall, the gaddi of generations of rulers of Golkonda.

  In a grotto facing it knelt the huge statue of a bull, draped with flower garlands and painted with arcane signs and symbols that in the flickering light of small oil lamps seemed to sway like dancing-girls. The Hindoo shrine stood cheek by jowl with a small mosque, from whose arched and latticed windows floated the gruff voices of Mussulmen chanting their prayers.

  Macfarlane tried to remember a prayer, any prayer, of his own people, but his thoughts spun away like bats from a ruined tower. Again that cold touch puckered his back, and he shivered. The night air wasn’t healthy. The sooner he acquitted himself of this adventure and returned to the shelter of the cantonment, the better . . .

  The steady tread of multiple booted feet echoed from the marble-fronted Hall. A patrol! Half drawing his broadsword, Macfarlane looked around to see Yasmina pushing against the base of a second statue. Her grimacing face paled with her efforts. The footsteps and the jingle of weapons approached. Macfarlane threw his mighty thews against the block of stone, so close to Yasmina’s side he could smell her body scented with a rich perfume, like that of highly spiced meat. Under her garments her lissome muscles were like taut wires.

  Only when the monolith shifted, squealing on a note so high it creased his mind, did he notice the statue itself, of a goddess dancing upon a pile of skulls.

  Yasmina slipped into the dark aperture that was revealed. Macfarlane had barely stepped in behind her when the secret doorway squealed again, and shut with the forbidding thud of a stone sealing a tomb. Every sound, every mote of light, was extinguished. He stood in stygian darkness as a cold, dank, cloying breath of air from some noxious depth ruffled his kilt around his knees and his hair on the back of his neck.

  Then a bright flame made him wince. Yasmina returned her flint and tinder to the pouch at her belt and plucked up a torch from the wall. Her eyes gleaming like gilded obsidian, she turned and started down a jagged series of steps.

  Macfarlane’s hand grasped the hilt of his sword so firmly his knuckles cracked, and he followed, down and further down. In the quivering torchlight the massive rounded boulders that made up the walls of the passageway pressed inwards and then out again. Crevices were draped with thick sheets of cobweb. Over the sound of their own steps he could hear the occasional slither or squeak, as nameless creatures fled from their approach.

  By the time they had reached the foot of the staircase, traversed a long tunnel, and arrived in a small room that appeared to be a dead end, Macfarlane was no longer chilled but hot. His brow was bedaubed with sweat and sweat trickled down his back beneath shirt, waistcoat, and coat. His mind seethed—what forgotten hands, long gone to dust, had built this secret passage? By gawd, all the riches of the Orient must lie at its end!

  The impassive Amazon listened at what appeared to be a wall of finely-cut stone blocks. Then she pushed, and the wall pivoted upon well-oiled hinges. She slipped through the opening and waited impatiently while Macfarlane wedged himself through as well. Then she closed the secret door.

  Macfarlane found himself in a niche lined with multi-colored tiles inscribed with row upon row of interlaced squiggles. The Mahometan letters writhed in the crimson torchlight like images of a fever dream. Dizzied as much by this diabolatry as by the air heavy with incense, he barely saw Yasmina drop the torch and draw her tulwar. “Mir Sikander’s men!” she hissed, and sprang toward the darkness gathered beyond the recess where they stood.

  He focused abruptly. This was something he understood. His weapons leaping into his hands, he bounded forward. From the shadows of a long columned chamber, an armored body and a cold blue blade hurtled at him. In a blinding blur of speed, Macfarlane stepped to the side and slashed upward with his dirk. He felt rather than saw his blade turn a corner of the man’s breastplate and plunge home. A satisfying stream of hot blood gushed over his hand. But before the guard’s body fell onto the floor at his feet, tulwar clattering, another had attacked.

  Again Macfarlane twisted, raising his broadsword to deflect the blow. Then he brought his sword back down, so fast his sinews cracked, so powerfully that his blade cut right through his opponent’s turban and into the skull beneath. He glimpsed wide dark eyes frozen in death, eclipsed by a fountain of dark blood. He wrenched his sword away and crouched for another attack.

  But there was none. Yasmina was stepping over a third body and back into the niche. The torchlight reflected off the tiles guttered red, driving the shadows back, but not touching the beams of thin white light glistening like wraiths in the vaulted crypt. Macfarlane peered through the closest window-slit, gasping for fresh
air to cool his heated face and clear his lungs of the stench of incense, indistinguishable from that of death.

  He saw the moonlight caressing the onion-shaped domes and scalloped arches of the city of tombs, the burial places of the Nizam’s predecessors, the Kuttub Shahi sultans. The unnatural woman, Yasmina, had led him beyond the Banjara darzawa, one of the mighty gates of Golkonda, and he stood now beneath the largest of the tombs. If he plucked up the torch and gazed into the darkness beyond those columns, he would see the cloth-draped sarcophagus of Tinat Begoom, the wife of one sultan, the mother of another.

  Instead he looked out and up toward the moon that shone implacably down upon the tombs and their gardens, as though the entire scene were carved of pearl, and diamond, and ice. Suddenly he was cold again. Is not the moon called Macfarlane’s Lantern? Is not the pipe tune of the Macfarlanes named ‘Lifting the Cattle’? Reiving’s in my blood . . . Cows were sacred here. The world was turned upside down. The sooner he filled his purse with those small, insignificant jewels, the sooner he could return to Loch Lomond and Arrochar, this time owning the land instead of working it at the sufferance of another.

  Invisibly a nightingale sang, remote from the fell deeds below the tomb. A shooting star cleft the indigo of the sky and was swallowed by the leprous moon. Yasmina called sharply, “Ferengi! Hurry!”

  Sheathing his weapons and turning his back on the free air—although even air did not come free—Macfarlane skirted the bodies of the slain into the niche. Yasmina was pushing at another wall. Like the first, it turned smoothly on a concealed pivot. This time they each stepped to one side of the secret slab, and found themselves in a small circular room.

  By some clever artifice, hidden apertures in the domed ceiling, perhaps, the room was illuminated by chill moonlight. Chests and bowls and vases of the finest bidri ware lined the curvature of the walls, save that here the metal inlays were not brass but silver or gold, shaped in intricate floral patterns over a backing as black as Yasmina’s eyes.

  Macfarlane’s breath fled his chest in a low moan of avarice. Heaped in those chests and vases were tokens of wealth beyond any dream of lust: finely-wrought gold embedded with jewels, emeralds and rubies like colored tongues of fire, sultry sapphires, strings of pearls of glimmering whiteness. And diamonds! Aye, there they were, Golkonda diamonds in loose piles of stardust or affixed to ornaments of every description, diamonds of such purity that even in the flickering shadows they radiated brilliance.

  In the midst of all these treasures, dominating the breathtaking display, stood the life-sized statue of a crouching tiger cunningly fashioned from the same bidri work, long curving tail, gold and black striped flanks, rounded ears, bewhiskered jowls drawn back in a growl and exposing white mother-of-pearl teeth. Each eye was a diamond large as Macfarlane’s knotted fist, and his fists were not small. The crystals were so clear as to be transparent, and yet, at the same time, blazed with a fierce splendor.

  There they were, the objects of desire, the Eyes of the Tiger. He took one step forward, then another. And stopped. What was that sound? A low rumbling filled his ears and vibrated in his bones. This time the cold grue that coursed down his spine racked his entire body. Beside him, Yasmina’s gaze lit with the reflected light of bloodshot torch and blanched moon, but she was watching neither.

  Slowly he looked back at the tiger. It was purring.

  His senses reeled. He was hearing only some secret channel conducting the night time breeze into the treasury. The tiger could not . . .

  The tiger’s stripes rippled as though muscles clenched beneath its metal skin. Steel claws glinted. And with a thrill of horror Macfarlane remembered that which he had forgotten, the dark rumor of baha mati heard in the bazaar. The whispered suggestion that Osman Khan, the Nizam’s treasurer, was a murshad, a sorcerer of great and subtle power.

  Desperately Macfarlane drew broadsword and dirk and clasped their bloodstained hilts in his rust-red hands.

  “Ai,” breathed Yasmina. Steepling her hands before her face, she bowed before the living image. “I meant no harm, sahib. Forgive me.”

  Macfarlane braced himself, blades long and short extended before him. The infernal creature leaped. The flare of glory in its eyes blinded him, so that he sensed rather than saw the beast passing along, through, around his swords, unscathed. A tremendous blow hit him and bore him to the stone floor, and a hot breath reeking of incense and spiced meats encompassed him.

  He twisted violently away and crashed up against a bowl that spilled its contents in a sparkling stream. Diamonds hailed against his face and slipped like icicles down the back of his collar. Diamonds cascaded over his coat. Diamonds rattled onto the flagstones beneath him. His hands clutched convulsively at his weapons but mighty paws knocked them away to bounce off Yasmina’s boots.

  She stood, eyes downcast. “Ai, sahib, I meant only to protect that which belongs to the Nizam, as is my duty.” And, with a flutter of her dark lashes toward Macfarlane’s prone body, “Spare this ferengi, I beg you, for he is an ally and has great courage.”

  Omnipotent paws pressing him down, claws pricking, and the uncanny eyes burning, burning. Pallid moonlight and scarlet torchlight and the flash and glitter of gems—hot spices and cold stone—the green hills of Arrochar in a gentle rain . . . Macfarlane’s senses stretched out, thinner and thinner, like smoke dissipating in the moonlight. And he knew no more.

  * * * * *

  Dr. Ferguson considered his patient’s flushed face and wheezing breath, then looked up at Colonel Smith. “I’ve seen many a fever, sir, but this is one of the worst. Several of the Nizam’s men brought him back in a litter just after dawn, with a message from Osman Khan saying that he was found wandering amongst the tombs of the old sultans.”

  “Why would the treasurer concern himself with a stray soldier?” asked Smith. “Was the man drunk and fighting?”

  “I doubt it. Macfarlane’s weapons were polished as though he were on parade, and his hands clean.”

  Macfarlane twitched and muttered. Ferguson picked up a bowl and spooned a few drops of beef tea between his trembling lips.

  “I hear that Mir Sikander’s been imprisoned,” Smith said. “And, more importantly for us, de Morville’s been sent packing. I gather that the munshi and a harem guard uncovered some plot, but I know no more than that.”

  Outside the window of the whitewashed room a sergeant drilled his men with shouts and threats, and the pipe major struck up a tune. Macfarlane’s blue eyes flew open at the skreel of the instrument and his huge hands, fingers curled like claws, plucked at the blanket. “The beann sidhe. Diamond eyes.”

  His slurred brogue was all but incomprehensible to his superiors. “The banshee?” asked Smith.

  “A herald of death. These Highlanders are bonny fighters, but superstitious to a fault.”

  “Well, no surprise he’d be thinking about diamonds. We all think about diamonds, here.”

  Ferguson sponged Macfarlane’s brow and the soldier subsided, eyes closing again.

  “Well, then. Tell me if he survives.” Smith strode out of the room, his tall burnished boots beating a tattoo on the tile flooring.

  “Yes sir,” said Ferguson to Smith’s crimson back. Then he reached into a similar coat hanging on a nearby chair, an ordinary soldier’s coat without epaulets and braid. From its pocket he pulled what looked like a glass walnut, so clear and bright it rivaled a star for radiance. “Yes,” he murmured, “we all think about diamonds, here.”

  Author’s Note

  “The Diamonds of Golkonda” first appeared in Cross Plains Universe: Texans Celebrate Robert E. Howard, edited by Scott A. Cupp and Joe R. Lansdale, a limited edition anthology published for the 2006 World Fantasy Convention by Monkey Brain Press and the Fandom Association of Central Texas.

  As a Texas writer, I was asked to submit a story to Cross Plains Universe, and am very pleased I made the cut.

  Despite living most of his tragically short life in a small Texas town, Rob
ert E. Howard’s imagination soared. He’s best known today for creating Conan the Barbarian and other fantasy heroes, but he also wrote stories set during the “Great Game”, the British campaigns in Central Asia and India. Howard wrote mostly during the 1920 and 30s, and I’m afraid that his stories haven’t aged well, either in style or in content. But they can still be great fun if you squint a bit while you read them.

  One of my daughters-in-law is of Indian descent. Her Hyderabadi relatives took us to see the fort of Golconda, as it’s spelled nowadays, which is still impressive. The Nizam did have female harem guards, a British contingent was stationed in the independent (until 1947) Hyderabad, and until the opening of the South African mines, all the world’s diamonds did come from Golconda. The Hope Diamond, now in a museum in Washington DC, is one.

  So is the Koh-i-noor, now among the British crown jewels. There are present-day Indians who are campaigning to have it returned, much as modern-day Greeks campaign for the return of the marbles from the Acropolis that are now in the British Museum.

  The Eye of the Beholder

  By the time Jake turned into the driveway the bombs were already falling. He stood beside the car and watched the flashes play along the bottom of the clouds like lightning. It was going to rain again—the wind was gusty, damp, scented with earth, weighing down the collar of his uniform. But lightning? No. The Luftwaffe was hammering the shipyards at Bristol, again.

  Not that he could do anything about it, not now. He stabbed his cane into the mud. The movement jolted the patchwork that was his gut and he winced. He should be glad he was out of it, safe, tucked away at this old house in the Somerset countryside. He should be glad to be alive.

  The conical shape of Glastonbury Tor stood in black outline against the distant fiery glow. Jake had crawled like a worm along the dark, narrow roads to get from there to here. He could’ve flown those few miles in seconds.