E. Hoffmann Price's Fables of Ismeddin MEGAPACK®

by E. Hoffmann Price

  “What of yourself, Uncle?” wondered the girl. “And those others who have risen with him?”

  “Too old for vengeance,” he said. “We have outlived our days. For us there is no retreat. Ahmad Shah will hunt us down, for the sake of his kinsmen whom Zahireddin tracked to their death. So we will thwart him by holding the rearguard, and dyeing our beards in blood while the others ride toward the border.”

  “It will be a rout?” wondered Jauhara thinking of the brave show of that army at sunset.

  “What else could it be? They will miss Zahireddin’s voice. He will not be raising his voice above the ring of steel and the braying of horns and the rumble of hoofs. They will wonder why he fails to lead them into the red mist of the morning—and so of course there will be a rout when the bimbashis lead their troops to the attack.”

  Jauhara’s glance shifted to the grinning terror that lay on its heap of rugs. That one eye was glassy, and mocking as the distorted face. It challenged her to divine what Zahireddin would have ordered, had he lived but a moment longer, and what reason he would have given for striking off that right hand.

  “It seems,” she mused, “that that sword-stroke was more important than anything else. It is as though he knew that that done, all else would follow. And his last thought was of vengeance… Temuchin, his friend, will die in the morning—and that will leave—”

  Jauhara knew what the answer was, but she dared not pronounce it, lest its weight crush her slender body.

  “Get me a horse, Temuchin,” she finally said, “and a safe conduct out of our lines. Ahmad Shah will sit on a throne tomorrow. I will be the only one left. So I will find vengeance. I will take that severed hand with me, and in the end I will know.”

  As she waited, Jauhara wrapped Zahireddin’s hand in a silken scarf.

  “Years ago,” the Tartar girl said to the silence of the pavilion, “this one-eyed slayer was a handsome boy. He must have loved that first Jauhara. Maybe I reminded him of her. And it seems only fitting that I should finish what she began—”

  * * * *

  Jauhara escaped. And the following morning, secure in the hills, she watched the rout of the army that once was Zahireddin’s pride. Then for a while she watched a copper kettle suspended over a bed of coals. She had a plan which required that the hand of Zahireddin be preserved until the day of vengeance; and racial memories, and old legends, and lore gathered among the people of the hills combined to tell her what to put into the copper kettle so that her memento of the lord of vengeance would in the end serve its purpose.

  When at last she descended to the lowlands, she learned that the capital had of course been sacked, the leading merchants strangled and their goods confiscated, and the outstanding adherents of the dead Sultan impaled; and that done, Ahmad Shah did his best to appear accustomed to the throne he had won at the wrong end of his life.

  “Bring me the head of Zahireddin,” he commanded. “Ay, wallah! Bring me his entire body, and I will buy it, weight for weight, gold coin against that unclean carcass. His carcass, all or any part of it—publish the orders at once, Ulugh Bek!”

  And it was so published.

  But the piecemeal clause caused certain woe. Ahmad Shah was suspicious when he noted that the severed left leg submitted for inspection was that of a man much younger and more swarthy than Zahireddin; and when by unhappy coincidence a second left leg was brought into the Presence, and also offered as that of the late Sultan, Ahmad Shah suspected fraud, and impartially crucified both claimants.

  “Change that order, Ulugh Bek!” he ordered, catching the eye of his chief wazir. “The entire carcass, and I will buy it, weight for weight, in silver bars.”

  And that, forthwith proclaimed, became law.

  Before three days had passed, a squad of Uzbeks had found and looted the grave in which Zahireddin had been buried that disastrous night, and dragged their gruesome plunder into the presence of Ahmad Shah to have it weighed and redeemed in silver. All was well until the Sultan noted that one hand was missing.

  “Dogs, and fathers of many pigs!” he protested. “What fraud is this?”

  “Protector of the poor, this is the very body of Zahireddin,” the Uzbeks declared.

  “But not all of it. Read them the law, Ulugh Bek.”

  And thus, since a hand was missing, the executioners began erecting in the public square a stake for each culprit, and one, loftier than the others, for the body of Zahireddin. For while Ahmad Shah quibbled about the lack of a hand, he could see no good reason for failing to defile the body of his cousin by surrounding it with a handful of grave-looters. But before either the Uzbeks or the corpse were impaled, a woman demanded audience of the new Sultan. She was unveiled, after the Tartar custom; she was uncommonly lovely; and, though Ahmad Shah did not know it, she was Jauhara, vengeance-bent.

  “My lord,” she said, “those Uzbeks are innocent of any offense. They had the hand of Zahireddin, but it dropped from the bundle before they reached their destination. I picked it up.”

  It seemed auspicious to Jauhara that she should arrive at a moment so suited to furthering her device. In the several days that had followed the death of Zahireddin, Jauhara had pondered, and out of her intentness she had at last shaped a portion of the words that Zahireddin had failed to speak; and seeing how the hapless Uzbeks had paved the way for her approach, she was certain that her search would not be vain.

  “But how,” wondered Ahmad Shah, regarding the parcel which Jauhara was unwrapping, “did the hand of Zahireddin come to be swathed in silk?”

  “Allah,” responded that dark-eyed girl, “is most knowing.”

  “Praised be His name!” intoned Ahmad Shah, grateful for the poisoning of his cousin. The several Uzbeks hopefully echoed the sentiment. But when Ahmad Shah scrutinized the severed hand, the expression of his wrinkled, crafty face became severe and dubious.

  “This,” he asserted sourly, “is not the hand of a man as old as Zahireddin.”

  His contention seemed painfully in order. There was a murmur of regret from those about the throne. It was exceedingly unhappy that a girl as attractive as Jauhara should be impaled. And the Uzbeks squirmed in unpleasant anticipation. Jauhara, however, was not perturbed; for she saw that a blind, unwitting current was surely leading her toward vengeance, and she knew that Zahireddin had truly known.

  “Allah upon you, O King! But this is indeed the hand of Zahireddin. Look how the calluses and markings of the palm most perfectly fit the markings of the haft of Zahireddin’s scimitar, which I perceive those Uzbeks brought in with the body.”

  Ahmad Shah saw that the girl was right. It never occurred to him to wonder at such acute observation; and Jauhara knew that stupidity was the advance-guard of doom. Zahireddin in the agony of death had foreseen.

  The Sultan signaled to the executioners to desist from their preparations, then frowned, and for an instant closed his eyes.

  “But how can this thing be?” he finally demanded. “One hand lean and shriveled, the other fresh and plump, as of a young man.”

  “That is more easily demonstrated than explained,” said Jauhara. “And so that no one can learn the secret by hearing my explanation—”

  She handed a folded slip of paper to a wazir to offer to Ahmad Shah. Court etiquette did not permit her to offer it direct; and thus the jade-hafted daggers whose slim blades were thrust as pins through Jauhara’s high-heaped blue-black hair could not yet reach. Ahmad Shah. But Jauhara knew that the few lines written in Persian were piercing as Turki arrows:

  Someone, my lord, has made preparations for the ritual known as the Breaker of Seals, whereby hidden treasures are revealed, and the dead are commanded to speak; and this severed hand is essential to the ritual, and serves in a peculiar fashion, being fuel for an unholy fire, and affording light for the reading of certain words tha
t cause the revealing of revelations and the appearing of apparitions: and the late Sultan’s hand is peculiarly efficacious in compelling him to expose his own concealed treasure. Which is an ancient tradition, and one which I learned from my father’s grandfather…

  Vengeance wears many masks; and Jauhara’s plan changed a dozen times in as many hours. But she knelt, at last, on the sand-strewn floor of an inner room of the palace that once had been Zahireddin’s, seeking with flint and steel to strike light to a pinch of tinder. Barred arches high above the floor cleft the massive walls and let sift into the solemn darkness a thin shaft of moonlight; and against the wall, squatting cross-legged, crouched Ahmad Shah, eager, and covetously watching the beginning of the ritual that required flame uncontaminated by any previous use.

  The preparations were being made in secret, lest following the revelation of wealth come its enforced division among the captains who had exalted the usurper. Ahmad Shah was not yet certain enough of his throne to risk refusal, and he was too grasping to postpone the ritual of the Breaker of Seals. And thus the nearest sentry was several barred doors beyond the inner room; but as she fanned the tinder to a yellow, aspiring thread of flame it seemed that Jauhara had been thwarted from the beginning. It had been so subtly done that she could not know whether it was by design or hazard that during the hours in which she awaited Ahmad Shah’s leisure her slender, jade-hafted daggers had disappeared: so that she knelt there, empty-handed—and beside her, the severed hand of Zahireddin.

  Jauhara felt terribly alone in that vaulted room whose sculptured cornices leered down at her. Even hope was gone, and only that poisoner, that father of treachery, remained.

  “By Allah, if this gray-bearded dog escapes me,” she said to herself, “the very hand of Zahireddin will throttle the breath from my body. And that first Jauhara will revile me—that first Jauhara who mocked death until her work was done—and done in vain, if I fail the Lord of Vengeance.”

  Then she unwrapped the silken scarf, and took the curiously prepared hand and set it upright in a small vase so that the pottery embraced the stump of a wrist, and the five outstretched fingers were as the branches of a candelabrum. The fingers of Zahireddin were now transparent and plump, and Ahmad Shah marveled anew; but Jauhara, who knew what embalming waxes and gums and spices caused that filling out of tissue felt no wonder, but only despair. Nevertheless she plucked a brand from the brazier and touched it to Zahireddin’s fingers, one by one; and each finger-tip exhaled an answering flame, unquivering, and spectral blue. The gums and essences which had preserved the hand of Zahireddin made grotesque corpse-candles of the fingers: and then Jauhara dropped sand into the brazier, extinguishing the fire she had kindled, so that only the blue tongues of flame illuminated the vaulted chamber.

  And the mockery had to continue. She had made promises, and she could not outlive her failure. Some thieving slave-girl had taken her jade-hafted daggers—and so Jauhara and vengeance would perish at one move. The poisoner was now patient and credulous: yet he would soon be disappointed and wrathful. Had she promised less, she might in the end have done more.

  But there must yet be a way. Zahireddin, she knew, had had the clairvoyance of the dying. He had known that his severed hand would bring its bearer into the presence of Ahmad Shah: and knew that with that much done, vengeance could find its way. Jauhara for a moment forgot her despair, and the certainty of doom no longer oppressed her. Ahmad Shah had become wan and futile in that hideous blue glow; and curious, deathly highlights marked his nose and cheekbones, and made his lips seem like something which has long been decaying. Jauhara shuddered, but she was no longer afraid of that poisonous old man; and in the darkness she was less alone.

  Ahmad Shah’s eyes were widening as he stared at the bluish-flaming finger-tips. It seemed that he had forgotten that he waited for her to begin reading from that old parchment she still clutched in one hand, intoning those words which would open seals, and reveal the hidden, and compel the apparition of whoever had buried treasure—and then came enlightenment which consoled Jauhara for the lack even of the slenderest sliver of steel. Ahmad Shah was stupidly gaping, hunched forward in fascinated eagerness. Jauhara remembered then the weapon which she had forgotten; she remembered that her hair was long and heavy, and that a running noose—

  “Vengeance and the Day of Vengeance, O Lord of Vengeance…” she murmured as she unfastened that high, blue-black coiffure, and divested it of its massive ornaments and pendants, and twisted a long serpent-strand… Not strength now, but deftness…

  The flames were now fringed with bluish, half-luminous fumes that ascended in tall, conical miters of transparent smoke. A cloying, spicy sweetness made the untroubled air first heavy and then stifling. Despite the fascination of his staring eyes, Ahmad Shah yawned, gulped eagerly of the air as though he had not breathed for a long time. Jauhara saw him shudder, and glance over his shoulder as though someone had touched an icy blade to the nape of his neck. She was certain that he had forgotten her.

  She was no longer lonely. Her heart was pounding like the drums that had throbbed from afar as Zahireddin had fought death; she knew now that Zahireddin’s last command had not been vain, and that the severing of his hand had been wisdom, and the foresight of the wrath that conquers. She did not yet quite understand, but she was dimly sensing what Zahireddin had sought to tell. Not strength, but deftness—and a running noose, swiftly slipped beneath the chin—he would strangle before he could fling her aside.

  Jauhara shivered as she felt the chill touch of something which made her skin tingle and her blood race wildly. Something had stroked her elbow as if to urge her forward, then had restrained her shoulder as if afterthought had found that the moment was not yet ripe. A third presence had entered the trebly barred vault; and a vortex of power was centering about the grisly blue flames which rose from the dead fingers of Zahireddin. It seemed that immeasurable time had elapsed since Jauhara had struck flint and steel; yet the blazing finger-tips were not perceptibly consumed. The fumes were now poison-sweet and dense; and the face of Ahmad Shah was as though viewed through many veils of gauze. Mists seemed to be swirling and writhing in strange vortices, and serpentines that possessed more than borrowed life…

  Zahireddin had entered into the sapphire glamour to make it live with his force, and his will which even death could not thwart. Zahireddin’s self had returned; and Jauhara’s fear equaled her exaltation. She could no longer doubt that a running noose drawn swiftly tight was what Zahireddin had planned; for wonder was past.

  But Jauhara’s advance ceased before it had fairly begun. Something was drinking the power and the wrath and the exultation from her blood, and the tense, lithe muscles of her slender body became limp as the silken scarf that had enfolded the hand of Zahireddin. And Ahmad Shah’s eyes, wide and staring, jerked suddenly away from their fixed contemplation of the blue-flaming hand of wrath, to center on the running noose of blue-black hair.

  She knew that Ahmad Shah could not see in that spectral vagueness what she had shaped with her hand; and yet his trenchant stare had in an instant made a blue hell of that haunted vault. Her lips were too dry to cry out, and her limbs were too limp for motion: and then she saw that Ahmad Shah’s eyes were focused short of her, and knew what had drunk the strength from her body.

  The shimmering mists had become sentient, pulsing whorls that were gathering into masses of light and shadow. Jauhara herself had become a part of that which was materializing there in that trebly guarded chamber; and yet not all of her identity entered into that swiftly shaping vortex, for at the same time she could watch it as from without.

  A hand was shaping out of the satanic glamour, a lean, hungry, wrathful hand that was calloused from years of gripping the haft of a scimitar—and yet strangely, it wore an unmistakable signet, as though it was at once and unaccountably both left hand and right. It was reaching from a luminous center that
came from beyond space, co-existent with and yet separate from the unyielding bulk of that curved wall.

  Ahmad Shah’s face moved as though he were crying out, but he made no sound. And then it seemed that he was gasping horribly for breath. Jauhara heard a crunching and a crackling. For an instant her ears had robbed her eyes—and when she saw again, she perceived that that monstrous hand had encircled Ahmad Shah’s entire body rather than only the throat, as in the beginning. Time had unaccountably ceased. Jauhara knew that if that wrathful crushing did not end, she could never again regain the vital force which had been stolen from her body…

  * * * *

  Jauhara awoke lying on the sand.

  Shining full in her face was the warped crescent patch of moonlight, striped by the bars of the high-arched window. The blue glamour was gone, and only a lingering, pungent poison-sweetness remained—that, and something whose shapelessness was all the more hideous because it was neither quite revealed nor utterly concealed. Jauhara knew that that was what remained of Ahmad Shah; and as she bound her hair, she turned away from that shadow in the blackness. She was amazed for a moment that that which had borrowed her vital forces had been able to return enough, unexpended, to let her pass the first barred door, and the second…and the sentry at the third, when he saw her disheveled hair, would know well indeed that Ahmad Shah would not care to be disturbed…

  “Thus it was in the old days, Sidi, long before the land was infested with British Residents and Russian agents, and other infidel dogs—saving your honor’s presence! Zahireddin Mahmud had learned that an amulet shaped like a hand is a symbol of power: and how much more so would his own hand be, that member which most truly divides man from beast. And he knew also, Sidi, that that Tartar girl, bearing his severed hand, would center all the will and the wrath of Zahireddin on whatsoever her own will centered. Then finally, he knew that if once he could cross the Border, he could steal from her strong, young body sufficient of the elemental substance, possessed by all creatures, to form the hand of wrath and reach from the shadows for vengeance. For it made little difference what that old hermit told him in that mountain cave, so that the will were strong and the wrath enduring: and thus spake my grandfather’s father, who told me of Zahireddin Mahmud.”