E. Hoffmann Price's Fables of Ismeddin MEGAPACK®

by E. Hoffmann Price

  “The hour is almost at hand, Haaji,” crooned the old man, “the hour of reprisal draws near…and you shall stand before the Lord of the World who dreams that which we see as things as they are…and he shall rebuild your fate as it should be…and you shall see those things whereof I have told you. Arise, Haaji, for the hour is here, and we have had enough music…and have but one more plum. Haaji…”

  Isfendiyar arose as might some colossus arise from the dais of stone which it had occupied for a thousand years. His pulse throbbed in cadence to the subtly shifting pulse of the darabukeh; and his mouth still tingled with the aromatic bitter-sweetness of those dried plums. He followed the darvish into the ruined shrine, and down a stairway into a subterranean vault where screened torches cast a flickering, indirect illumination upon its curved walls and cinnabar-sprinkled floor.

  In the center of the vault was a dais whereon sat an old man, asleep, or in deep meditation. His head was bowed; his eyes were half closed; his white beard trailed to his waist; and between his hands he held a great globe of crystal in whose depths played and shifted the flickering torchlight.

  “Haaj Isfendiyar,” purred the darvish, “you are now before the Dreamer of Atlânaat, the Lord of the World, he who built this mighty citadel the day that he completed the creation of the world. He sleeps, and sleeping, dreams, and all things that seem to be are but figments of his dream; and those things whereof he ceases to dream, at that instant cease to be.”

  And to all this Isfendiyar agreed; and of all things in the world this seemed the most logical, that the visions of that Dreamer should at the instant of dreaming become fact made absolute.

  As he spoke, the darvish extended his arms and with passes of his long-nailed talons he stroked the forehead of Isfendiyar; then stepping to his left side, with his knuckles he rapped sharply here and there along his spine, and with rapid movements passed over his body, pausing to knead this muscle and that. And all the while he crooned in his purring monotone; and all the while Isfendiyar acquiesced to the strange things whereof the darvish sang, and with each stroke and pass seemed to be drawn from his body, so that he could stand beside it and watch it, even unto the stare of his own fixed eyes.

  “All this is but a dream, and we are but one of the Dreamer’s fancies. And were he but to awake, we and all things else would vanish and become as nothing, and less than nothing. So that he must not awake, ever…but I shall whisper in his ear that which I wish him to dream, that which when made manifest will give you ample vengeance and high fortune… Now gaze into that crystal into which he gazes, and think on your vengeance, and I shall play my drum, so that he will dream that which, as it is dreamed, becomes truth, and fact accomplished…”

  The tiny darabukeh, spurred to life by the fluttering fingertips and thumping knuckles of the darvish, rolled, and purred, and reverberated in its maddening rhythm. The flavor of those dried plums still lingered in the mouth of Isfendiyar. His senses reeled, and swam, so that it seemed that he floated in a perfumed sea: erect, and on his feet, but floating, with waves of poison-sweetness warmly lapping his cheeks. The crystal became clouded, then opalescent, then clouded again. A murmuring filled his ears, the murmuring of many voices chanting from afar, and the thump-thump of drums that spoke of blood, and flickering blades, and the slowly flapping pinions of vultures.

  The clouds parted; and there, before him, Isfendiyar saw the sultan walking in the gardens by moonlight, strolling as was his custom by fountains and among rose trees. And then from the shadows emerged a figure moving stealthily, and bearing a drawn poniard which shimmered icily…

  Isfendiyar exulted at the vengeance to come; identified himself with the dark form of the avenger. Surely it was himself that he saw, dagger in hand. And all that which the Dreamer dreamed was at that instant to be made truth, and a fact accomplished. The dark figure approached the sultan; the blade rose…

  With a hoarse, strangled yell, Isfendiyar leaped forward, wrenching himself from his vision. The Ladder to Heaven flamed wide and swiftly. The head of the Dreamer rolled at his feet on the cinnabar-powdered floor.

  Isfendiyar fled from that fiend-haunted vault, taking the steps four at a leap. Once above ground, he ran down the wide avenue, scimitar still clutched in his hand, frenzy staring from his eyes.

  The fragment of a shattered column interrupted his flight. He sprawled flat in the street, his blade ringing as it struck the paving.

  “Why this haste, Isfendiyar?” queried a calm voice at his side. “Were the sights not to your taste?”

  Staggering to his feet, Isfendiyar saw the sultan himself confronting him. He picked up the Ladder to Heaven, stared the prince full in the eye, then flung his scimitar to the paving.

  “Now mock me for saving you from the Dreamer and his dream!”

  He reeled and would have fallen but for the sultan’s supporting arm.

  “I know well what you saw in the crystal, Haaji, for I heard the words of the old darvish who had drugged you with plums laden with hasheesh, and chanted your senses away with his mumming words and his thumping drum. Vengeance you sought; yet when you saw me about to be slain, you ended the Dreamer’s dream.”

  Then, to the darvish, who had emerged from the vault, “Well, Ismeddin, are you through with your jugglery? Name your reward, for you have served me well in vindicating my faithful Isfendiyar.”

  The darvish laughed.

  “Well, and I have served myself also. And this I demand: that you restore Isfendiyar my grandson to favor.”

  “Your grandson?”

  “Yes. For while as Ismeddin the darvish I have often come from the desert to advise and help you, I am also Ismeddin el Idrisi, and the father of that Mamoun whom your father sent to his death for the sake of a dancing girl. And now I return to the desert to meditate on the folly of serving princes. But I bear you no ill will for the sake of that fierce old man your father. If you need me again, seek me as before. A thousand years!”

  And the old man vanished in the darkness of the ruins.

  The drugged, addled brain of Isfendiyar had cleared itself of the hypnotic thump of drums, the juggling words of the darvish, and the poison-sweetness of those strange plums.

  “My lord, who was that Dreamer whose head I sheared off? Or was there really a Dreamer?”

  “Oh, that was your friend Ismail. Circumstances were against you, damningly so; for even your presence at court was in keeping with your shrewdness and audacity. But after having passed sentence, it occurred to me that the attempt on my life had been made for some purpose other than that of slaying me: for a true assassin would instinctively have kept his weapon, or even the remainder of it, in his grasp. Its being dropped was the first false note. And in the light of reflection, that warning note was the second error: I know you well enough to know that had you really designed my death, no one would have been able to warn me, for you always play a lone hand. Last of all, Ismail seemed too elated when he announced your presence this morning, and too disappointed when he heard the sentence. So I summoned Ismeddin, and later, invited Ismail to drink with me. Then, drugged, and adorned with a patriarchal beard, I sent him to this place to pose as Dreamer. Thus in the end he was killed by that very fidelity he had impeached.”

  “But suppose the strange tricks of Ismeddin had failed, and I had not struck?”

  “I knew that when your grandfather proposed that test he was sure of himself and his strange powers. Well, and now to horse!” exclaimed the sultan as a groom approached.

  And the wazir Isfendiyar rode back to Angor-lana at the right of his friend the sultan.

  THE INFIDEL’S DAUGHTER

  Originally published in Weird Tales, December 1927.

  CHAPTER 1

  Landon’s pavilion was pitched on a crest that rose high above the broad plain of Babîl. About the foot of the mound his men were encamp
ed: some quarreling, smoking, gambling, diverting themselves after the day’s march; others walking their posts in the darkness beyond the guard-fires. Landon himself awaited the arrival of the chief of his caravan, Haaj Ismeddin, the ex-darvish.

  “Es salaam aleika, saidi,” greeted the old man as he entered the pavilion.

  “And with you, exceeding peace, Haaji,” returned Landon. “Where are we tonight?” he questioned as the old man seated himself on the rug at the master’s feet.

  “We are on the plains of Babîl,” intoned the old man sonorously, beginning his recital which only in its details varied from that of the day before, and the many days previous to that one. “Just before us is Mosul, and far behind us is Balkh; to our right is the Tigris, and close at hand is the mound of Koyunjik, under which is buried a lost city of the infidels who once ruled this land.”

  “Where have we been, Haaji?”

  “We have been in all the lands of the earth, saidi,” replied the pilgrim. “We have heard the tinkling sitar in Herat of the Hundred Gardens, and heard the splash of their fountains; we have seen the star of evening flame high above the uncounted domes and pinnacles of prodigious Atlânaat; we have seen the incredible bulk of Angkor towering above the jungles of Siam; within the red walls of holy Marrakesh we have been the friends of princes, and in Khotan the khan esteems us.”

  “And what do we seek?”

  “Who knows what we seek, saidi? In the tombs of the Kings of Pegu we found cool, unblinking sapphires, and great rubies that smoldered like the embers of a plundered city; and in far-off Java, in mysterious Borabador we found gold that ancient smiths had tormented into odd shapes for the pleasure of forgotten princes. Lost and obscure lands have disgorged treasures to us, who knew not what we sought, and cared not for what we found.”

  “And where are we going, Haaji?”

  “Where the will of Allah leads us, in search of we know not what. And who am I to know more?” concluded the old man with finality, as one coming to the end of a lesson well recited.

  “In search of I know not what, to be found I know not where,” murmured Landon to himself.

  “Saidi,” began the pilgrim, “there is something which you seek. Can you not trust your servant? Have I not served you well?”

  “Well and faithfully, Ismeddin,” replied Landon. “What do I seek? What does anyone seek who wanders over the earth?”

  “But you have nothing to seek, master. You are wealthy beyond reckoning; you have seen war and adventure; in Herat you have a palace and the daughter of an emir; and the princes of Asia are your friends, from holy Marrakesh to Turkestan. Tell me, saidi,” persisted the old man.

  “Very well then, Ismeddin! I am on the trail of a phantom. A vision, a legend, an apparition whose traces I have found everywhere, whose presence I have found nowhere. And what I have in Herat of the Hundred Gardens is not enough for me. To say more would be madness. Now bring me my journal, Haaji, and then inspect the sentries. Remember, a hundred lashes for any who sleep on post tonight.”

  When Ismeddin left, Landon devoted himself to his journal, writing of Mosul, and the mound of Koyunjik, in whose base were the ruins of palaces, and the monstrous effigies of winged bulls whose human heads wore long curled beards, and were crowned with tall miters: solemn, awful images which archeologists had not been able to induce their laborers to disturb. And he regarded with curiosity the clay tablets he had found in the rubbish of the excavations that afternoon: tablets of sun-dried clay, inscribed with cuneiform characters and stamped with seals among whose devices he recognized the Tree of Life. But he could not name the king who knelt and worshiped a woman mounted on a lion.

  Three clay tablets. All that remained of lofty walls and great palaces and high towers; three clay tablets, and the solemn winged bulls.

  It was most unlikely that anyone could have passed the outposts and the encampment as well. And yet Landon sensed a presence. He glanced over his shoulder; moved away from the wall of the pavilion; resumed the writing of his journal; arose from his work, made a circuit of the pavilion, re-entered, and returned to his task.

  The thump-thump of an atabal rolled up from the encampment; and then came a monotonous, guttural chant, and the beating of hands and the stamping of feet in unison. His men were diverting themselves with unsavory songs, to whose cadence one of their number burlesqued the steps of a Cairene dancing girl.

  Presence, indeed! What if Ismeddin had seen the master glancing over his shoulder and fidgeting in that fashion!

  Landon felt his toes twitching nervously; found himself clenching and then relaxing his fists, and pausing to twist his mustache instead of writing his journal. It seemed that Ismeddin had been gone longer than usual. He wondered why his men never changed the tune of their chant at evening.

  A faint breath of sweetness crept into the pavilion, scarcely perceptible at first, but gradually becoming more penetrating, mingling with the aroma of Landon’s cigarette, so that he fancied it might be the source of that insinuating perfume. But it couldn’t be! Those cigarettes had been made to his order; and ran true to form. And even one, had it been scented, would have betrayed its presence ere this. He ground the half-burned cigarette into the earth just beyond the fringe of the rug that covered the pavilion’s floor, and fumbled for an unpolluted smoke. And then, with a start, he dropped his case.

  A slim girl stood in the entrance, regarding him with long-lashed, smoldering eyes. Silver-white she gleamed through the smoke-like wisps of gauze that clothed her shapely form. Yet before all this loveliness Landon shivered.

  “I have sought you from afar, saidi,” she purred softly, matching with her voice the sweetness that had heralded her arrival, “and finally I have found you. Here, of all places! Encamped on the ruins of that noteworthy house of mine which once stood on this very spot.”

  As she advanced to the center of the pavilion, she adjusted the extraordinary diadem that adorned the abysmal darkness of her hair. Landon marveled at the sinuous grace of her arms and slim fingers, and the undulating, rippling glide of her walk. And he wondered that he had shuddered as he first met her veiled, Babylonic eyes.

  She paused in her advance, halting at the center of the pavilion.

  “Noteworthy house?” hazarded Landon, vacantly.

  “Yes. It has been in ruins for some time. Oh, ever so long a time! You know, my friend, Naram-sin, built it for me. And when he died…”

  Her voice trailed into nothingness; her words were completed in an arching of her pointed brows, and a fleeting gesture of her tiny hand, as though no words were needed where but one conclusion could be drawn.

  Landon was still wondering how she had ever passed the sentries. For some reason it did not occur to him to wonder how long a time must elapse before one could pitch one’s camp on the site of a once noteworthy house.

  “Tell me, lady, and who are you to be seeking me?”

  One thing at a time; never mind the discrepancy about Naram-sin, and the noteworthy house. And even one thing at a time is too much.

  The girl laughed, and effortlessly seated herself, cross-legged, on the lustrous Bijar rug at Landon’s feet.

  “Those of Mosul who have seen me dancing here in the moonlight call me Bint el Kafir. Which in a way is right. Why not call me the Infidel’s Daughter, when since the death of Naram-sin I have lived in a villa on the crest of Djeb el Kafir?”

  Landon’s brain was slowing up like run-down clockwork. He blinked, passed his hand over his eyes, stroked his beard. Questions were fighting for expression. Twice he half opened his mouth to speak, but said nothing. The girl disregarded his stupor, ignored his inertia, and patted her dusky coiffure.

  “Yes,” she repeated, “I am the Infidel’s Daughter. And I have come to tell you…but what have you been seeking all your life of wandering, saidi?”

  And L
andon, as in a dream, began the ritual he had so often heard old Ismeddin repeat, concluding with, “And I am going where the will of Allah leads me, in search of I know not what.”

  The girl smiled as at a pupil who has learned his lesson well.

  “Say rather, saidi, if truth is any consideration, that you have heard of a shrine on the topmost crest of Djeb el Kafir, in which hangs a small drum, and at the base of whose altar are three clay tablets resembling those which you picked up today.”

  Landon momentarily recovered from the numbness that weighted his senses.

  “Lady, you know too much of Djeb el Kafir. And you wear a diadem strangely like the one—”

  “Why should I not know? I live there, and have, for a long time. But since you know so much, saidi, have you the heart to learn all? Come now, tell me the truth! Over all of Asia you have sought her who dances to the evening star on the crest of the Mount of the Infidel. But could you endure the Hundred and One Strange Kisses she bestows on those who summon her from across the border? Could you, saidi?”

  Landon leaped to his feet, staring.

  “Who are you?” he demanded, grasping the girl by the wrist. “And how do you know the thoughts I hardly admitted to myself?”

  “My lord, I am more than Bint el Kafir. I am Sarpanit. And in Armenia they have another name for me. But you are bruising me. Be seated, saidi, and I will dance for you.”

  Whereat she drew from her curiously embroidered girdle a small vial whose stopper she removed. The heavy perfume that pervaded the pavilion increased to an overpowering, deadly sweetness. With a drop from the vial she anointed her eyebrows; and with her fingertips she smeared a drop of that overwhelming fragrance on Landon’s eyelids, and on his black beard. Then, pivoting about on the tips of her toes, she spilled the remainder of the essence in a circle about her, snapped her fingers thrice, and began a dance of statuesque, formal steps and poses.