E. Hoffmann Price's Fables of Ismeddin MEGAPACK®

by E. Hoffmann Price

  Farrell followed d’Artois’ glance. Her faintly aquiline face was delicate as a Persian miniature, and his pulse quickened as he caught the inviting gaze of dark eyes that smouldered behind the transparent veil which was held in place by disc-headed pins thrust like monstrous marigolds into her black hair. Farrell no longer tried to follow Ismeddin’s sonorous Arabic. He caught his breath, and his gray eyes narrowed as he returned the intent appraisal of the slender Sabean girl whose graciously curved body and shapely legs gleamed golden-ivory through her sun-pierced gown. And then the corners of her amorous mouth lifted in the shadow of a smile.

  “Let her look, Pierre,” whispered Farrell. “You can pilot that crate the rest of the way to Djibuti and then sell the damn thing for scrap. I’m staying here to learn the language a bit better.”

  “Some of those nuts, mon ami!” growled the Frenchman. “You young fool, you’ll probably end up by being flayed alive and crucified. Anybody that’s done as much exploring as you have ought to know better than to look at native women—”

  “Nuts yourself, Pierre!” countered Farrell. “When anybody that’s done as much exploring as I have gets cold-calked by an eyeful like that, something’s got to be done about it. That girl’s going with us to Djibuti.”

  “Imbécile!” grumbled the Frenchman. “Talk Arabic to match your clothes. That’s our only hope of getting out of here with whole hides. Particularly with your damned romantic stupidity!”

  And then Ismeddin returned from the parley and announced, “The Amir welcomes you. These people worship the sun and stars, like they did in the days of Queen Balkis; so I told him that you came to pray at the shrine of the moon goddess, and that beside being able to fly like a bird, you can raise the dead, and—”

  “You would!” growled Farrell. “And now there will be the devil to pay—if anyone dies here—”

  “No wonder she looked at you that way,” interpolated d’Artois. “But when do we eat and where do we camp?”

  “As I was about to say, ya Bimbashi,” resumed the old Arab, “we will be quartered in one of these ruined palaces. And tonight we will witness the ceremonies at the temple of the moon. This way, sidi. That tall fellow will show us to our quarters. And we will leave, inshallah, before there is any occasion to raise the dead.”

  “Like hell we will,” muttered Farrell as he followed his guide. “You couldn’t have doped out a better way of crabbing the act!” Then catching a parting glimpse of the large-eyed girl with the golden hair pins and noting the amorous curves of her slender body silhouetted by horizontal rays that glared through an archway, he added, “But miracles seem to be in order in this man’s town.”

  Grilled lamb, flat cakes of bread, and water from the spring that made Madinat-ash-Shams a verdant spot in the blistering southern desert was presently served to Farrell and his companions as they were breaking out their kits in the vast ruin which darkness had suddenly enveloped. The menace and lurking mystery of antiquity oppressed Farrell; and the camel dung fire over which Ismeddin was brewing coffee cast a glow that seemed to animate the gigantic, solemn faces sculptured on the masonry. He shivered, and not from the evening chill that had followed sunset. Then he pictured again the subtle invitation that had lurked on the lips of that Sabean girl and heard in his fancy the tinkle of her golden anklets.

  D’Artois’ face became grave as he sensed the significance of Farrell’s sudden change of expression.

  “I’ll watch here,” he said, “so I’ll be on hand to warm up the motor at the first sign of rioting.”

  “Hell, Pierre,” chuckled Farrell. “I won’t look for her tonight. They don’t allow ladies at the prayer meeting.”

  He gathered his flowing djellab about him and followed Ismeddin up the broad avenue to the loftiest of the ziggurats, or tower-temples erected centuries ago by the worshippers of the heavenly bodies. He heard the mutter of drums and the insinuating whine of stringed instruments, and the heart shaking clang of great brazen gongs.

  “It is insane…this idea of making a date with the granddaughter of the Queen of Sheba…”

  Smoking torches illuminated the broad stairs that led to the ziggurat on the first terrace of which thronged the last of the Sabeans who had once ruled all of Arabia. Farrell felt cold chills race up and down his spine as the chanting and drumming hammered into his very soul; and something told him that the Sabeans were a cruel and lustful race to make drums and cymbals whisper such things to a man’s heart.

  Farrell saw curtains slowly parting to reveal the shrine, and forgot all but the sinister spectacle before him. He barely understood the words of the clean shaven, chanting priests ranged beside the altar, a great square block of carved basalt; but the knife that gleamed in the hand of one who whetted the frosty steel needed no interpretation. They were about to offer a sacrifice. The victim was a young, dark haired girl who had been stripped of all but her dazzling beauty, and a broad, sapphire encrusted girdle about her slender waist. Her eyes were closed, and her head was inclined. She sat cross-legged, and with her arms crossed on her breast. For an instant Farrell tried to assure himself that that was no living woman, but a tinted statue, the goddess of the shrine. He relaxed, exhaled a sighing breath, then froze anew as he noted that she was breathing. She was unbound; and Farrell knew that she must have been drugged so that neither struggle nor change of expression would detract from her ceremonial posture.

  The gongs now clanged deafeningly, drowning the chant of the priests and the chilling snick-snick of the sacrificial knife. Farrell glanced about, and saw row upon row of fanatic faces, wolfishly gleaming eyes, tall, muscular men enthralled by the blood lust that made the very atmosphere a corrosive poison. To interfere would be suicide. He would be torn to pieces by the frenzied worshippers. Those amiable Sabeans were drunk with the sadistic thrill of waiting for bare steel to sink into warm flesh…

  The silver-mitred priest had now taken the knife. Farrell’s drawn face was pale. His brain exploded in a blaze of wrath. He reached for his pistol.

  A hand snatched his wrist just as his groping fingers told him that his holster was empty; and then Ismeddin’s voice hissed in his ear, “I took it—stand fast—this is no business of yours—”

  Ismeddin’s grip restrained Farrell and restored his sanity. But before he could lower his eyes, or turn his head, he caught the flicker of steel, saw the red tide gush in the wake of the retracted knife, and horribly redden the still crossed hands, drench that shapely golden body and mask the sapphires of the girdle at her waist. His brain reeled, his stomach revolted; and his wrath died in the sickeningly lurching pit of his stomach.

  Ismeddin whispered, “There will be no more this evening. The other two will follow—one tomorrow night—and the night after—”

  “The other two!” Farrell’s horrified glance swept the shrine. In alcoves at either side of the altar he saw what he had not previously observed; two girls arrayed like the one whose blood the priests were collecting in golden bowls and sprinkling on the howling, frenzied worshippers who had surged toward the altar. By the torch glow he recognized the one at the left; it was she whose amorous lips had smiled at him through her transparent veil only a few hours earlier.

  “Get out before the accursed of Allah see you and read your mind,” urged Ismeddin. “She is safe enough tonight.”

  Farrell staggered down the broad steps of the ziggurat and into the darkness; but that cool gloom was hideous with the image that mocked him from every shadow. And as he strode down the wide avenue toward the plaza, he heard Ismeddin say, “One tonight, one tomorrow night, and the third just as the new moon rises above the lip of the valley. And here is your pistol. Haste is of Satan. You could not save the first. But you may yet have a chance to find the—the one you were seeking.”

  They were chanting again in the ziggurat. The cries of blood lust had become a hymn of praise to
the Sabean goddess of the moon.

  D’Artois said nothing when he saw Farrell’s tense, pale face and the murderous light in his eyes.

  “Better sleep,” said Ismeddin, indicating the rugs spread out on the paved floor. “I will take the first watch of the night.”

  Even after silence had crept over that accursed city, the mutter of bloodthirsty drums still rang in Farrell’s ears, and that red tide still flowed before his eyes; but finally his senses were dulled by a troubled drowsiness that was more tiring than wakefulness.

  He awoke with a start. Someone was kneeling at his side, and plucking him by the shoulder. A woman whispered in that language which was first cousin to Arabic. The hand that gripped him was withered as the voice that said, “She is waiting for you. She dies tomorrow night if you do not save her.”

  Farrell was on his feet in an instant. Ready for trouble, he had slept full pack, and thus lost no time in dressing. As he followed the stooped, shrivelled old woman, he caught a glimpse of Ismeddin’s tall figure lurking in the shadow of the silvery fuselage of the plane.

  The old woman led the way down a narrow alley between two of the smaller buildings that faced the plaza; and presently Farrell was lost in the ribbon of blackness that wound in and out among houses that were old when Queen Balkis, young and beautiful as the one they had sacrificed to the lunar goddess, had confounded King Solomon with her riddles and had herself been ensnared by a shrewd bargain that could only be kept by giving herself for a night to that wily monarch whose wisdom she admired more than his patriarchal beard. Lucky Solomon…

  Farrell sensed that this guide was a servant of the girl whose eyes had invited him at sunset. He wondered why she was taking him past the ziggurat; but he followed until she finally halted at a low doorway that pierced a massive wall of masonry. There, beckoning for silence, she caught his hand and drew him into the blackness of a narrow, tortuous passageway, at the end of which she pushed him ahead of her and across the threshold of an open door. Before he could turn, the door closed against him and he heard the soft, ominous metallic sound of a bolt sliding home.

  “What a sap!” he muttered. “Trapped by an old hag.”

  Farrell drew his pistol as he cleared the pilaster that buttressed the wall. Then he returned the weapon. He was looking through a low archway into a brown, dismal vault which was illuminated by a single taper. A girl was lying face down on a couch of rugs and cushions spread on the mosaic floor. Her dark hair was unbound, and its blue black length enveloped her to her hips. Her face was buried in her arms, and she was softly sobbing to the silence. Her slender ankles were fettered, and her chains were attached to heavy eye-bolts anchored in the masonry of the wall; but her arms were free.

  Though Farrell could not see her face, the gracious contour of her waist and the luxurious curve of her slender hips and shapely legs identified her beyond question. She sensed his presence, and sat erect. The misery faded from her dark, wide eyes. Her pomegranate-hued lips smiled; and then she remembered that she was unclad except for the broad, jeweled cincture about her waist. One hand drew her rippling hair about her, but thick as it was, it could scarcely conceal from Farrell’s beauty-dazzled eyes the magnolia blossom contour of her firm, ivory-smooth breasts and the lovely roundness of her thighs.

  “Don’t bother,” said Farrell in Arabic, as he finally found his voice. “I won’t look lower than your shoulders…”

  “I’m sure you’ve not skipped anything—so another glimpse—” She laughed softly and brushed away a tear that glistened on her long lashes; and then the smouldering darkness of her eyes again became troubled pools of misery. As Farrell knelt on the tiles, her arm twined about him and drew him to the couch of silken rugs. He felt the clinging curves of her warm body and inhaled the dizzying sweetness of the attar which perfumed her lustrous hair; and for a moment Farrell forgot the deadly peril of the situation, and the menace that lurked in that lost city. But before he could find her lips, she shuddered, and whispered as though she feared that the very walls might hear, “Were you there—did you see—”

  “God, yes!” Farrell shivered from the chill that even her intoxicating presence could not dispel. He snatched the chain that secured her, wrathfully tugged against its stubborn, hand forged links, then shook his head. “If I’d only brought a chisel from the tool kit—”

  As he turned to rise, she caught his arm and drew him back, saying, “No. You can’t cut that chain. It would make too much noise. And if you went and returned, someone might see you. And then—oh, there’d not be a chance…”

  Her arms twined about him, and fresh tears moistened the folds of his djellab.

  “Damn it! Then how will I get you away—”

  “You can’t,” she sobbed. “It’s impossible. They’re watching. I don’t know how my old nurse ever slipped you in here… You must leave tonight before they—”

  “Wait a minute!” interrupted Farrell. “Did you send for me to tell me to leave before the natives mobbed us?”

  She drew her head from his shoulder and for a long moment regarded him. Her smouldering eyes and half parted, amorous lips told him why he had been summoned; and the deep, sighing inhalation of breath, raising her faultless breasts through her streaming hair left no doubt. Terror had departed from her eyes, and passion burned in their dark depths as she sank back among the cushions and with outreaching, inviting arms drew Farrell toward her…

  Her pomegranate blossom lips were sultry as breath of the desert, and her quivering, supple young body was a multitude of questing, devouring flames that seemed to envelope Farrell as her arms closed on him with a possessive fierceness that forced from him the breath that she drank from his lips…and neither heard the ironic, mocking note of the ankle chains that tinkled with every movement…

  Time had been lost in that perfumed darkness that was broken only by the now faintly flickering taper…but her inarticulate murmur at last found words as she caught her breath.

  “God…who are you anyway…” Farrell hoarsely muttered, stirring as he finally became aware once more of the silken rugs beneath him. He understood, now, why in the face of death she had sent her faithful slave to bring him to her arms, and perhaps to a savage doom. And though slaked passion made way for the lurking of peril, Farrell understood, and was glad; for if she must die, she would now die a woman, and not a girl who had never lived…

  “I’m Makeda,” she murmured. Desire had for the moment left her eyes, yet her smile was a caress. But Farrell was perplexed by the triumph that glowed from her lovely face. He leaped to his feet, cursing his folly in having succumbed to his desire and thus robbed him of a chance to go to the plane and get tools that might sever her chains. But Makeda drew him back.

  “You don’t understand,” she continued. “Now I won’t die on the altar. Only virgins are eligible for sacrifice to the moon goddess.”

  She sighed luxuriously and shrugged aside a long black tress that twined over her left breast. Farrell’s brain was again a whirling confusion. He frowned, seeking to collect his thoughts; but his eyes persistently strayed to that perfect left breast—perfection heightened by a star shaped, black mole.

  “But how,” he finally demanded, “will the priests know you’re no longer a virgin? If you told them, they’d just think it a trick to escape—”

  Her eyes clouded, and then Makeda answered, “Why…the same way anyone else would. That’s part of the ritual. But now they’ll merely keep me locked up in the temple. They won’t throw my blood to the crowd.”

  Farrell’s eyes blazed wrathfully. To think of that incredible girl going from his arms to one of those blood drinking priests seemed worse than watching her face the sacrificial knife. He tore and tugged and struggled with her chains until his hands were raw; and then, abandoning his vain fight, he said, “I’m going to cut you loose. I’m coming right back—”

&
nbsp; He ignored her protests. He shouldered the door before he remembered that it had been barred. But it yielded to his touch; and presently Farrell was slinking through a maze of bewildering passageways. The stars, however, gave him his general direction; and then as he emerged in a wider alley, he noted the familiar bulk of the ruined palace that overshadowed the plaza. He hastened toward his landmark, and in a few moments he saw the glistening wings of the trimotored plane.

  Ismeddin, appearing suddenly from behind the colossal stump of a shattered column, recognized Farrell and turned to walk his post; but when he saw him enter the plane, and presently emerge with a hammer and chisel, he seized his arm and said, “Don’t go back. It’s—”

  “Hell!” snapped Farrell, jerking clear. “I know what I’m doing.”

  But the old Arab shook his head. “I talked to that old woman. Do you suppose she sneaked by without my seeing her? She told me all about it. You can’t get back into the house. You’re lucky to have gone as far as you did. Listen—”

  Farrell cocked a sharp ear at the silence. He heard muffled hoofbeats, and the subdued ring of steel. Then he noted that the false dawn was breaking, and that the true dawn would soon follow. In the deceptive grayish murk of the street from which he had entered the plaza he saw the spectral bulk of a tall man on horse; and a second followed him into a side street.

  “Can’t make it, sidi,” said Ismeddin as a curse of exasperation rumbled deep in Farrell’s throat. “Without a guide, how could you pick the right doorway, or find her room?”

  Ismeddin was right. Farrell turned and without a word entered the hall where d’Artois was sleeping; but when the sun flamed up over the sombre walls of Madinat-ash-Shams, he was still groping for some device to extricate Makeda from the grip of the priests.

  * * * *

  The old Arab, seeing Farrell gloomily engrossed with the morning coffee, read his thought, and said, “It is not absolutely impossible. Get out the medicine chest and sit here in the plaza to bandage the wounded and give pills to the sick. That will make you popular here. And that is what you need, until—”