E. Hoffmann Price's Fables of Ismeddin MEGAPACK®

by E. Hoffmann Price

  “Hear His Excellency seek favors of old Ismeddin!” mocked the darwish.

  And Sir John endured his misery in silence.

  “My lord,” continued the darwish, “I obeyed your command concerning Sidi Rankin. As to the Holy Carpet, it comes without reprisal in its wake.

  “I warned the Amir before witnesses that I had come to steal the carpet from the shrine of Imam Ismail, Allah curse the heretic! And the Amir laughed, and invited me to spend as much of my life as I cared to devote to that enterprise. He posted a company of the guard before the shrine, with orders to shoot me down if I crossed their line with as little as my finger tip. And he swore that if I could take it, then it was mine.

  “And here is the Holy Carpet. By your beard, ya sultan, this is the truth.”

  The Sultan and Sir John listened to Ismeddin’s account of the taking of the carpet, and of the fighting in the hills, and of the feasting of the vultures…

  Then said Ismeddin, “Your servant offers you a throne carpet worthy of a prince. And the sight of it is like listening to exalting music.”

  The darwish attempted to fling the carpet across the throne from which the Sultan had risen; but the Sultan stopped him with a gesture.

  “Ismeddin,” he said, “that carpet is red with the blood of the Companions of the Old Tiger. In the old days when I tossed away the lives of my men, I rode leading them; but now I sit safely on my throne. So I will not sit on that blood-stained rug!”

  “So be it, and the thought is worthy of you, my lord,” said the darwish. Then, with a lordly gesture, “Permit me then to give it to my faithful servant with whose blood this carpet is reddest.”

  He beckoned to the groom.

  “Take it, Saoud, and my blessing with it!”

  The purple tinge left Sir John’s face, and he sighed his satisfaction.

  “My word, your Majesty,” said Sir John as he turned from the throne to leave the audience hall, “an unusual fellow, this Ismeddin. A bit irregular, you know, this keeping the stolen carpet, but since Captain Rankin isn’t involved, it will be quite satisfactory. Entirely so, your Majesty.”

  Then, as the Resident passed the sentries at the door of the audience hall, the Sultan said to Ismeddin, “Why did you demand protection you didn’t need? And who is this groom of yours? He’s so loaded with bandages I couldn’t recognize him.”

  “I demanded protection,” replied the darwish, “for the purpose of giving that ass of a Resident a few unhappy moments for making me thwart an honest looting.

  “As to the groom: that is Sidi Rankin in one of his disguises.”

  And Ismeddin told the Sultan the unrelated portions of the quest of the Holy Carpet as a bandaged, sword-slashed groom with a bundle on his shoulder led a foaming horse toward the excavations not far from the city wall.

  THE FORGOTTEN OF ALLAH

  Originally published in The Magic Carpet Magazine, July 1933.

  In his lighter moments, Shams ud Din the sultan was a man of rare humor. And thus it was that instead of following his entirely reasonable impulse to strangle Lailat, his favorite wife, he presented her as a slave to the personal maid of Djénane Hanoum, the one woman of all women Lailat loathed.

  Shams ud Din smiled to himself for a whole hour, and then resumed his diplomatic wranglings with Yakoub Khan, who ruled the state across the border, and straightway forgot his jest; but Lailat was eaten by the wrath possible only to a deposed favorite who has become the slave of a slave, and did not forget.

  Lailat remembered, and in the end, devised so that destiny came to Nurredin, the sultan’s nephew, in a bale of brocades and silken rugs left at his house by an Armenian merchant. Intrigued by the Armenian’s haste to depart without pay or present, Nureddin personally unrolled the bale, and wondered what favor would be expected in return for a bribe as rich as the outer layer indicated.

  As he unrolled the luxurious fabrics, an amorous, intoxicating perfume greeted him, but did not prepare him for the incredibly lovely girl who emerged from that stilling silken cocoon.

  “Mashallah!” gasped Nureddin in admiring wonder.

  “Protector of the poor,” began the girl, “I am a stranger from Tcherkess—”

  She paused for a moment to adjust the tall, curiously wrought head-dress that crowned her copper-red hair, and smiled with her lips and her sea-green eyes, so that no further explanation was necessary.

  Then Nureddin saw the embroidered cipher of his uncle the sultan on the border of the veil she had drawn back again into place.

  “I take refuge in Allah!” he exclaimed in alarm. “What enemy sent you to me? The sultan would flay us both alive—”

  “Nureddin, don’t I know that as well as you do?” she purred in rippling Persian ever so faintly accented by her native language. “But I saw you, and loved you from afar. That old gray wolf, your uncle—”

  She shuddered; and Nureddin understood.

  “So when that Armenian called at the palace with his fineries, I bought the entire bale and told him to return after I had decided what I’d keep for myself, and then deliver the rest to your house.”

  Nureddin frowned, and reflected on the exceeding folly of letting that amazing girl stay even for a moment in the house.

  “Sitti,” he said, “that fellow may suspect, and babble.”

  “He wouldn’t dare. His head would go with ours. And I paid him well. Look—I gave the infidel every ring and bracelet.”

  “Then,” said Nureddin, “he’ll be in some wine-shop drinking himself drunk tonight.”

  “Yes. At the one just next to Dervâzeh-i-Suleimani. And he calls himself Nazar Shekerjjian—”

  “That simplifies things somewhat,” remarked Nureddin, as he fingered the jeweled hilt of his dagger.

  The green eyes followed the gesture; and the girl’s lips were a curved, carmine sorcery, and her perfume was intoxicating as Shirazi wine.

  “I am going to the wine-shop you mentioned,” continued Nureddin, “with a gift for this excellent Armenian.”

  And Nureddin knew that there would be other slayings for the sake of this red-haired girl from Tcherkess; but Nureddin did not know how deep with blood the streets would be in the end.

  * * * *

  That evening Nureddin returned from a stroll that began at Dervâzeh-i-Suleimani and ended in Jabran’s wineshop. Then he wiped the blade of his dagger, and abandoned himself to the purring sorceries that Lailat murmured in his ear. She spoke of a throne, and of an old gray wolf that would no longer be hunted in vain; and then she mentioned a darwish who sat in the dust by the Herati Gate, all unaware of the part that Lailat proposed for him.

  Like all the grasping, plotting brood of Zenghi, Nureddin coveted the life and throne of Shams ud Din, who had lifted himself above the heads of his kinsmen; but Nureddin’s enthusiasm was diluted by the recollection of the spectacular fate of his predecessors in ambition.

  “Hunting Shams ud Din is hazardous sport,” objected Nureddin. “With his own hand he has shot and cut down more assassins than his bodyguard. A handful of the best fighting-men in the country waylaid him once. Not one escaped alive. The steps to his throne are slippery with the blood of those who have hunted the man of iron.”

  “They were fools, and the forgotten of Allah!” scoffed the green-eyed girl. “You are cunning as well as strong. And Shams ud Din is no longer the mighty man-slayer he once was. He drinks himself drunk every night, and is secure in his cloak of terror.

  “So when Ali Agha returns from the court of Yakoub Khan, he and Shams ud Din will sit in the reception hall to decide the open question of who can put away the most ’araki. Then you will fire just once, from behind the curtains that screen the alcove facing the entrance of the hall.

  “The rest will be simple,” continued Lailat. “Ali Agha will be too
drunk to resist. So while you make a pretense of fighting with him, yell for the guard. When they arrive, Shams ud Din will be carried to his quarters. Then you will substitute the darwish for the sultan. They are as alike as two rain-drops, and Allah alone could distinguish one from the other. In a short time, the announcement of Shams ud Din’s full recovery from his wounds will be accepted as just another proof of his immunity to assassination. And then, Nureddin, you will rule, using the puppet sultan as a mask.”

  “That is too good to be true,” protested Nureddin, but not as vigorously as before. “First of all, this darwish couldn’t resemble my uncle as closely as you say. And then, even if he did, that band of his father’s picked ruffians, the Pious Companions, would know the difference. When he was a boy, the Companions taught him to handle horse and arms. To them he is God and the Prophet in one. The throne is supported by the swords of those old raiders.”

  “Nureddin,” sighed the girl wearily, “how strangely lacking you are in imagination! Just have them sent out to patrol the border. What could be simpler? A courier will come dashing into the throne room with news of revolt in the hills…”

  “Sitti,” admitted Nureddin finally, “it does sound reasonable. For while the Companions are gone, I can clear the city of Shams ud Din’s cronies and cup companions. And that done, we can dispense with this darwish, and I will reign in my own right—”

  “Oh, Nureddin!” exulted Lailat, “I knew you’d not neglect your chance. Why did Allah send that darwish if not to help you hunt that old gray wolf?”

  “Praise be to God, the Great, the Most High!” exclaimed Nureddin piously; and in the morning he went out to seek darwish.

  * * * *

  Nureddin found the darwish in the dust at the Herati Gate.

  “Mashallah! As alike as two grains of sand!” marveled Nureddin, as he studied the lean, hawk-like features of the darwish.

  Mahjoub the darwish was quite unaware of the scrutiny of the sultan’s nephew: for Mahjoub was engrossed with a long-stemmed pipe loaded with Yamani tobacco mixed with hasheesh. He drank its fumes, and followed fancy where fancy led. A touch of madness, real or feigned, is part of the stock in trade of a darwish, for madness lends the air of sanctity that adorns, or masks, as the case may be, the diverse roles of mendicant, itinerant scholar, versatile scoundrel, or vagabond saint, all of which are covered by the brown robes of these privileged characters. And, combining pleasure with the establishment of holiness, Mahjoub had stepped with both feet into the realm where Man and God are One, where sultans and their nephews and their plots are nothing and less than nothing.

  At last, exalted by the richness of his fancies, Mahjoub spoke.

  “Aywah! Aywah! Aywah!” he intoned. “This is my day of days, and I am the lord and master of destiny!”

  The darwish paused, and solemnly contemplated a vista of splendors, then continued, “Mahjoub has met destiny at the crossroads!”

  “Allah and again by Allah!” swore Nureddin. “My uncle’s voice and gesture as well as his face.”

  And then, to the officer in command of his escort of soldiers and footmen: “Throw that fellow into jail. Maybe he’ll learn to smoke that stuff in private.”

  The soldiers pounced on the darwish like a wolf pack.

  “Hear with all your ears! See with all your eyes!” he chanted as his escort hastened his march with well-directed kicks. “Mahjoub is master of thrones and crowns!”

  Nureddin yawned to conceal his elation, and signaled to his retainers as he wheeled his horse about and rode to the palace. As he rode, he heard the sonorous declamation of the darwish.

  “Praise Allah, a happy omen!” exulted Nureddin. “That hasheesh-smoker sees his destiny as clearly as I see mine.”

  That night Nureddin waited in the alcove that faced the brilliantly lighted reception hall of the palace. From time to time he peeped between the curtains that concealed him, and contemplated with satisfaction the flasks of ’araki that the sultan and Ali Agha, the red-bearded Albanian captain of irregulars, had emptied. The imposing array of liquor yet to be consumed predicted progress in the right direction; and Nureddin, taking this into account with the capacity of the drinkers, had estimated how long it would be before he could start his march to his uncle’s throne. As a final touch to the perfection of his scheme, he had armed himself with a revolver stolen that day from Ali Agha, so that the assassination would without a trace of doubt be charged to a drunken quarrel between the sultan and his cup companion.

  “So you’ll take the chief wazir’s head tomorrow?” remarked the Albanian as Shams ud Din poured himself a stiff drink and with a pious “Bismillahi” drained it at a gulp. “But, my lord, what’s that father of many little pigs done now?”

  “Nothing at all,” replied the sultan, after extinguishing the scorching fires in his throat with a slice of cucumber and a spoonful of curds. “Wallahi! And that’s the beauty of the idea. This city is a nest of traitors lying awake nights hoping to find me asleep at the wrong time. But when they see Zayd’s head on a lance-shaft by the Herati Gate in the morning, every one of the horde of plotters will be discouraged by the thought that I uncovered a scheme so secret that he had not heard a whisper of it. Thus each will suspect his fellows, and they won’t be able to get concerted action against me.”

  “Mashallah!” marveled the Albanian. “There is craft for you.”

  “Mashallah!” said Nureddin to himself as he fingered the butt of his revolver and peered between the scarcely parted curtains, “and if that is craft, then he is indeed the forgotten of Allah!”

  “One has to be subtle,” agreed Shams ud Din. “Since I can’t trust my spies, nor the spies I set to watch my spies—by the way, I have a great notion to take a hand at it myself, and see what those fellows are doing tonight, and how many are taking bribes for bringing me false reports.”

  “I take refuge from Satan!” exclaimed the Albanian. “Surely you don’t mean that? Someone might recognize you—”

  “Shaytan blacken thee! We’ll go disguised as beggars,” explained the sultan, “and no one will recognize us.”

  “Worse yet, my lord,” protested Ali Agha. “You’d not fool any one. You couldn’t cry for alms like a beggar. Go as a darwish.”

  “Alms, O ye Charitable! Thy liberality is my meal, O True Believer!” bellowed the sultan in the voice of a commander of a thousand horse. “Now see if you can do any better, you red-bearded robber of graves!” challenged Shams ud Din.

  “My lord,” insisted Ali Agha, “your voice would cost us our lives. You couldn’t do any worse if you disguised yourself as a dancing-girl! Let’s go as merchants, or darwishes—”

  “Shaytan rip thee open, O Red Beard! You’ve become an old woman!” countered Shams ud Din.

  And then he poured himself another mighty drink of ’araki, gulped it, and grinned at his cup companion.

  That amiable, drunken grin and squinted eye and head cocked to the left stirred Nureddin to action.

  “Drunker than he’s ever been. Not even when he sacked Kubbat al Ahhmar… Ya, Allah! Where’s that messenger with news of revolt in the hills? God blacken his face!…”

  Nureddin drew his pistol.

  “I’ll send the Companions a written order—”

  Nureddin leveled the weapon. He couldn’t miss. But as his trigger finger slowly contracted, Shams ud Din shifted on the diwan, so that the standard of a tall brazen floor lamp blocked the line of fire. The mark could still be attained; but that last instant’s shift cracked Nureddin’s nerve, and his hand shook as with palsy.

  Shams ud Din had once more proved his claim to a charmed life. Shams ud Din was still the old gray wolf that so many had hunted in vain. For a moment Nureddin felt that he was the hunted rather than the hunter; and as his arm sank to his side, he barely restrained himself from headlong fligh
t from the neighborhood of that hard-bitten campaigner who had with his own hands cut down so many assassins.

  Then Nureddin collected himself. Shams ud Din would surely move into full view again.

  “Ho, there, Selim! Hussayn! Abbas!” bellowed the sultan. And as he waited for the arrival of his attendants, he continued, “By Allah, I’ll do my own spying, alone—”

  “No, sidi, I’ll go with you. And as a beggar,” agreed Ali Agha.

  And then they wrangled as to the details of the sultan’s proposed espionage; but Shams ud Din did not move enough to present a fair target.

  “O God, by God, by the One True God!” swore Nureddin in despair. “That drunken fool will get out of here untouched, and with his signet ring on his finger—”

  Nureddin had missed his chance; for while Shams ud Din lurched forward to pour himself another drink, the presence of two of the attendants prevented Nureddin’s carrying out his plan. Then the third reappeared, bringing with him the tattered robes he had taken from two beggars sitting at the side exit of the palace.

  “Now, by Allah, what’s wrong?” demanded Shams ud Din of the secretary who rushed unceremoniously into the majlis, halted at the diwan, and presented a sealed message to the sultan.

  “Iskander Bey is raiding along the border again, my lord,” replied the secretary. “Here is the complete report. Is there any answer, sidi?”

  Shams ud Din waved aside the attendants who were setting about arraying him in beggar’s rags, unfolded the message, glanced at it rapidly, and then re-read it carefully.

  “Allah sift me! Didn’t you tell me all was quiet on the border?” he demanded of his cup companion.

  “So I did, my lord,” replied the Albanian. But it is two days’ ride, and in that time Iskander Bey—but to say more is insulting!”