Ismeddin in the meanwhile had led Maksoud, still bound and gagged, and his escort of black mamelukes into the courtyard.
“Father of many little pigs,” murmured the darvish, “our lord the Sultan has taken offense at your last display of wretched marksmanship. And since none of his own fancies were worthy of you, he is even now taking counsel with Abaddon of the Black Hands. I expect him any moment, well advised and smiling. So be assured against anything as commonplace as being sawed asunder between two planks.”
The Africans had dismounted, and were taking from their packs all manner of implements, as well as cords, flasks of oil, charcoal, and a pair of small bellows. One of them set to work kindling a fire while the other three deftly fitted together mortised and tenoned pieces of dark, heavy wood, assembling a stout frame equipped with hooks, manacles, and shackles.
“It is difficult to say what form the master’s fancy will take,” resumed Ismeddin, as he approvingly regarded the executioners at their work. “But surely it will not be commonplace.”
He picked up a keen, two-handed sword, tested its edge and balance.
“Very pretty. But you will have nothing to do with this.”
Then, as he noted the four horses tethered to a column: “Ah!…now that, with certain variations, has real possibilities. You are quite substantial, Maksoud…but those horses are sturdy little beasts…”
Ismeddin stroked the neck of a savage Barbary stallion, and continued, “But then, that also is swift. At the best, it lasts but a little over a day, even with the nicest of workmanship,” mused the old man.
Ismeddin deftly removed the gag from the prisoner’s mouth.
“He can no more than banish me!” sputtered Maksoud. “The Resident would depose him were I not to return. Old ape…son of many pork-eating fathers…do you think all this parade of curious torments will kill me of fright? That is an old story. I myself once helped him—” And Maksoud’s laugh rang true.
“So?” Ismeddin smiled suavely. “Well, and I said that you would meet none of these commonplace things. But supposing…just supposing, as food for thought, that we were to let you down into that black pit. You have seen those who have played about these ruins—” Ismeddin nodded to the black slaves, who advanced to remove the prisoner from his horse.
“Not that, saidi,” implored Maksoud.
“That, and more than that. You have seen those who lost their way in these ruins. And you once laughed at what was left of one who finally did find his way out.”
The executioners, skilled as they were at handling tormented wretches, kept their hold on Maksoud with difficulty.
And then the cool voice of the sultan, as he emerged from the pit: “Well, Ismeddin, couldn’t you wait for me? I heard his howling long before I reached the surface.”
“Mercy, O Magnificent! Not into that pit of Iblis!”
“The penalty of poor marksmanship, Maksoud,” declared the sultan. “Had you practiced in private a few more days, I would not be here deciding your fate.”
He smiled and stroked his beard.
“And so you fancied being sultan, did you?” resumed Schamas ad Din. “Those wild fancies are deplorable. Yussuf, here, has devised an entertainment worthy of your bungling; but he shall save it for another.”
The chief of the black slaves looked up from his implements, and grinned.
“That pit, master…spare me that!”
“Well, and so be it, Maksoud… ungrateful son of my brother. But listen: I have devised a doom which will make that pit seem a childish game, and the companions of the pit pleasant playmates. For those whom these ruins have done to death and torment and madness have lived but a month or two of frenzy. But what I have devised—” He paused, ignoring the prisoner and his pleas. The sultan’s smile faded, and his features became drawn and thoughtful. He leaned against the balustrade, and stared at those eleven all too life-like figures squatting on their pedestals of chiseled stone.
The executioners were now supporting rather than holding fast the prisoner. And they themselves, hardened as they were to applying fire and steel, shifted uneasily, and licked their dry lips as they regarded the sultan. And when he turned, they dropped their eyes to avoid his eyes.
Still the sultan did not speak.
His presence was a smoldering doom.
Then a poison sweetness crept up from the mouth of the pit.
From its blacknesses emerged the figure of a bearded king, who solemnly advanced with measured steps, as to the cadence of a slowly beaten drum.
The tongueless executioners dropped their implements, and made horrible, choking grasps at speech.
But as if alone in a desert waste, the presence strode through the group. His robe brushed Maksoud as he passed toward the other side of the court, bearing in his left hand a strangely carved scepter, and with his right hand stroking his long, curled beard.
Straight across the moon-bathed tiles, and to the twelfth pedestal; and then with infinite care and deliberation, he seated himself cross-legged after the fashion of those eleven all too life-like images.
Very faintly came the sound of a distant gong: not resonant as bronze, but rather as the hissing of a serpent or the rustling of silk.
The sultan started. Then he looked Maksoud full in the eye, and smiled that terrific smile of his father, the Old Tiger.
“Maksoud,” he began, “you sought to be king before your day, and forgot my friendship and favor. You could not wait for me to meet my doom on the highroads of Allah. And I shall now punish you by giving you—” The prisoner choked and gasped.
“Not that, saidi—”
“By giving you,” continued the sultan, “that which you sought, so that the fullness of possession shall corrode your soul worse than any torment could corrode your body. You shall sit on my lofty throne and publish the orders dictated by an infidel Resident. He shall thwart your vengeances. He shall make a mockery of you, the last remnant of the lordly estate of kings. You shall rule by words rather than by swords.”
The sultan drew his scimitar.
“Your friends shall seek you with daggers in your gardens. Poison shall lurk in your food and in your thoughts. Bungling marksmen shall never quite attain the mark you will finally wish them to attain. Your enemies will pity you.”
The scimitar flickered twice, and the stout cords fell from Maksoud’s wrists and ankles.
“To horse, Maksoud, and ride to your throne!”
The sultan sheathed his blade, advanced a pace down the spiral pathway of darkness, then paused to listen to the hoofbeats of Maksoud’s cavalcade.
Old Ismeddin leaned over the balustrade.
“A moment, saidi! Let your first whisper in the girl’s ear ask for two British Residents in Angor-lana.”
And with a courtly salaam to the master, Ismeddin disappeared among the ruins.
THE SULTAN’S JEST
Originally published in Weird Tales, September 1925.
The old sultan sat in his palace at Angor-lana, reflectively stroked his white beard, and smiled as one who recollects an ancient jest. And it was a grim jest that he had in mind, for, though his lips curled in the shadow of a smile, his keen old eyes flamed ominously from beneath brows that, rising to points in the center like Saracenic arches, heightened the sinister expression of his leathery features.
A capricious tyrant was this old despot who pondered on the doom to inflict upon his favorite, Dhivalani, the Kashmiri bayadere, and her lover, Mamoun el Idrisi, the existence of whose illicit amour he had sensed with uncanny intuition. And so sure was he of their guilt that he devised punishment in advance of any confirmation of his suspicions; devised punishment, and awaited the arrival of Ismail, his chief wazir, who had been commissioned to trap the bayadere and her lover, Mamoun of the great house of Idris.
The sultan yawned, as might a tiger consumed with ennui, then settled back among the cushions of his dais. His smile widened; but the sinister light did not fade from his eyes.
“Read!” he commanded, addressing Amru the scribe, who sat at his master’s feet.
“The spider spins her web in the Palace of Caesar,” began Amru in his rich sonorous voice that time had not cracked, “and the owl stands watch in the tower of…”
“Enough!” snapped the sultan. “What news, Ismail?”
“A thousand years,” greeted Ismail, bowing himself into the presence; “I have seized el Idrisi and Dhivalani.”
“And who was the accomplice that has been smuggling Mamoun into the seraglio?”
“Saoud, the chief eunuch. He has just been sewed up in a bag and dropped into the river.”
“Very good,” commended the sultan. “Yes, it was just as I suspected. Mamoun has been swaggering about the court too proudly of late; Dhivalani has been entirely too vivacious; and Saoud has displayed more wealth than any honest eunuch could possibly accumulate. And so you trapped them? You did well, Ismail.”
“My lord is an elephant of wisdom,” observed the wazir, who was not blind to the sultan’s pride in having so skillfully detected another palace intrigue. “And I, the least of his servants, have but acted upon his infallible judgment.”
“Nevertheless, you did well. But tell me, Ismail, how shall we punish this Kashmiri and her lover?”
“Well…we might flay them alive and rub them with salt, or we might place them between planks and have them sawn asunder,” suggested Ismail.
“Nonsense!” flared the sultan. “Have you no imagination? An amour is carried on in my own harem, under my very nose; and were it not for my intuition, it would still be going on. And here you suggest such commonplace punishments as though they had merely defrauded in the payment of the salt tax, or had stolen a prayer rug from the mosque!”
“My lord is a mountain of sagacity,” interposed the wazir, penitently. “What would he suggest?”
The sultan shook his head despairingly.
“Ismail, you are an utter ass! You, my chief advisor, failing me when I am in need of wise counsel! I wish something novel in the way of punishment, and here you suggest the reward of a thieving camel driver!”
Odd and curious punishments were the sultan’s forte; and on this occasion he demanded something distinctly different from the sanguinary slaughter and dismemberment that were the portion of petty offenders; he demanded a touch of the unique, something to tickle his sense of humor, of poetic justice. And far into the night the sultan and his chief wazir wrangled and debated, considering the matter from all angles.
All the while, Amru the scribe, whom the sultan had neglected to dismiss, nodded sleepily at the foot of his master’s dais, and pondered on the exceeding folly and cruelty of old men who kept young and beautiful girls imprisoned in seraglios. He silently cursed the old man his master, who plotted strange vengeance after the fashion of a scholar resolving an abstruse problem; he cursed that fate which forced him, Amru, to sit impotently among scrolls and reeds, and hear of that which would leave the noble Idrisi a shapeless, mangled horror, a frothing, gibbering madman. And though the Prophet (upon whom be peace and power!) had denied souls to women, he shuddered as he listened to that which might be the portion of the lovely bayadere.
And then a new touch was noted in the sultan’s discourse; his imagination was asserting itself in a vein of savage humor that was a distinct departure from even his most novel devices. A decision had been formed. Amru heard, and hearing, gained hope. Reflectively, the old man fingered several gold pieces he had withdrawn from his wallet. To discover where the lovers were imprisoned was by no means impossible. There was still a chance, a chance he would take though it cost him his head; for Mamoun was the friend of Amru, and a noble young man who respected old poets. And as Amru listened to the sultan’s perfecting of the device under consideration, his hopes flamed high and fiercely. A word, but a word or two…
Yet all this brave hope was vanity: for the sultan, after dismissing his wazir, addressed the scribe.
“Amru, due to my carelessness you have heard more than is good for you. Mamoun is your friend; and to leave you free to work your will tonight would inflict too great a strain upon your loyalty to me, your master.” The scribe’s wrinkled features were devoid of expression as he met the sultan’s hard, keen gaze; but he sensed that the sultan’s intuition had divined his very thoughts.
“And to save you from being torn between loyalty to me and your friendship for Mamoun,” continued the sultan, “I shall keep you within arm’s reach until sunrise, after which it will be too late for you to be overcome by kindly sentiments.”
Again the old despot smiled in anticipation of the doom that was to be inflicted the following morning.
“What is my lord’s pleasure?”
“You shall spend the night in shackles at the foot of my couch, guarded by one whose head shall answer for your continuous presence. Follow me.”
* * * *
Sunrise awakened the fierce old sultan to thoughts of the day’s wrath.
“Release him,” he directed the sentry who had guarded Amru. And then to the scribe, “The few minutes between now and the appearance of the prisoners in the hall of audience can avail you naught. And thus have I saved you from choosing between fidelity to me, or to your friend, el Idrisi. To your duties, Amru!”
The sultan smiled ironically. But he did not observe the curious light in Amru’s eye as the scribe bowed himself from the presence; nor did he observe that Amru fingered a golden coin.
It was but a few minutes after the morning prayer that Amru took his post at the right of the sultan’s dais in the hall of audience. Disposing about him his inks, reeds, and scrolls, he awaited the appearance of the court, and the pronouncing of doom upon Mamoun and the lovely Kashmiri bayadere. And as he waited, Amru peered anxiously about him, and with nervous impatience.
A moment later Iftikar the executioner, a huge negro, nude save for a scarlet loin-cloth, made his appearance in the hall of audience. Instead of his ponderous, crescent-bladed scimitar with which he usually executed the sultan’s judgments, the African bore a tray upon which reposed two small flagons, and two large goblets of ancient, curiously wrought Cairene glass.
“And with you, exceeding peace,” returned Amru in response to the negro’s salutation. “But where is your scimitar? Is this to be a drinking bout instead of a passing of judgment?”
“Who am I to question the master?” countered the executioner. “Though I doubt that he will make me his cupbearer, for he claims that in the entire world there is no one who can make head and shoulders part company as neatly as I can,” concluded the African with a justifiable touch of pride.
The negro turned to pick up the tray he had set on the steps of the dais.
“Just a moment, Iftikar,” began the scribe; “since you have traveled so much, perhaps you can tell me what manner of coin this is.”
The executioner took the proffered gold piece and examined it closely.
“It is a Feringhi coin, such as I once saw in the souk in Cairo,” he announced. “And the image on it is that of an infidel sultan, upon whom be the wrath of Allah! But where did you get it?”
Before Amru could explain, a great gong sounded to announce the approach of the sultan and his court. The African tossed the gold piece to Amru, seized the tray, and took his post at the left of the judgment seat.
Eight cadaverous Annamite fan-bearers filed into the hall of audience and disposed themselves about the dais. Following them came a detachment of the guard, resplendent captains of horse, and pompously strutting officers of the sultan’s household, officials, and distinguished visitors. Then came Ismail, the chief wazir, stalking majestically to his posit
ion on the topmost step, and to the left of the dais; and last of all, the sultan himself, lean, hook-nosed vulture, who, after taking his seat, signaled to Amru to read, as was the custom of the court, a verse from Al Qurán.
“By the noonday brightness, and by the night when it darkeneth,” intoned the scribe, “thy lord hath not forsaken thee, nor hath he been displeased…”
“Sufficient! Bring in the prisoners!” commanded the sultan. And again he smiled as one who contemplates a subtle jest.
Mamoun el Idrisi, handsome and arrogant, and calm in the face of certain and unpleasant doom, was escorted to the foot of the dais to face the sultan’s wrath; and with him was the Kashmiri bayadere, the wondrously lovely Dhivalani, beautiful, and equally composed in the presence of her sinister lord and master. All hope was gone, if ever hope there had been. No mercy could be expected from that fierce old man who smiled evilly from his commanding position. They had had their hour or two of grace, had tempted fate, had lost; and the utter hopelessness of it all made them unnaturally calm and self-possessed.
“You, Dhivalani, who were my favorite, and you, Mamoun el Idrisi, upon whom I conferred wealth and honor,” began the sultan, whose words rolled forth like the cruel, resistless march of destiny, “have merited the sentence I shall pronounce, and more. My father, upon whom be peace, boiled his favorite in a great caldron and fed the broth to her lover until he choked from having had his fill of the lady; and my grandfather, who sits in paradise at the Prophet’s right hand, was even more severe.”
The bayadere shuddered, more at the sultan’s sardonic smile than at the horror he had mentioned. But Mamoun of the great race of Idris met the sultan’s gaze unmoved.
“But I shall be merciful,” continued the sultan. “No man or woman could live through enough torment to do you justice. In the end, you would die and cheat my vengeance; therefore have I devised so that your punishment shall outlast any that have ever before been inflicted. And to achieve that end, one of you must live.”
E. Hoffmann Price's Fables of Ismeddin MEGAPACK® Page 25
