E. Hoffmann Price's Fables of Ismeddin MEGAPACK®

by E. Hoffmann Price

  A native girl. Her flesh was a warm, rosy amber, and he caught the glint of moonlight in her incredibly large, dark eyes. They were dark and somber, and the fascinating sweetness of her face was subdued by the wistful, almost melancholy mouth.

  Reed’s eyes strayed down the gracious lines of her throat, and the firm, full blossoming breasts and inward sweep of her waist. He caught his breath, and for an instant cold thrills overwhelmed the warmth that had surged through his veins.

  Beneath the gossamer that rippled with the sway of her hips was a broad silver girdle agleam with uncounted sapphires that glittered frostily in the moonlight. He heard the soft tinkle of the jeweled pendants that reached half way to her knees. For an instant it seemed that the basalt image had come to life!

  Then Reed assured himself that she must have been prowling in the excavations by moonlight and had discovered a tiara and a jeweled girdle worn uncounted centuries ago by some perfumed favorite of a Babylonian king. She had found the treasure, and was displaying it to the best advantage in order to strike a bargain.

  If she removed that silver girdle…

  And then fresh wonder again subdued the desire that her shapely smiling curves had aroused. Her lovely face was a duplicate of the green basalt features of Bint el Hareth!

  Utterly impossible—but there she was, standing in the doorway, silhouetted against the moon.

  “I knew I could finally find you,” she was saying in Arabic, “if I waited until the moon rose.”

  * * * *

  The night had become a witch-glamor that chilled and at the same time inflamed Reed’s blood; then he told himself that it was after all not so strange that a village girl should strikingly resemble the green basalt statuette in face and figure. She was substantial, and the moonlight did not sift through her body, but only through the tenuous gauze that enveloped her.

  “I have been waiting for you, Malika,” Reed replied. “For a long time.”

  Digging for long buried ruins is lonely work, and even scholars have their human moments. This girl was one for whom any man might have waited. She was glamor that walked by night.

  Her slender fingers loosened the tent’s lashings, and as the flap slid down into place, she deftly knotted the cord again.

  Reed struck light to the gasoline lantern hanging on the tent pole. As he turned back toward his rug, the girl was at his side. He felt the warmth of her body, and the soft promising pressure of her gracious curves. The scent of her dark hair dizzied him, and the glow in her eyes told him that she had not come to trade in stolen antiques.

  “Gorgeous,” muttered Reed, seating himself on the rug and, catching her hand, he pulled her down beside him.

  She shook her head, and her smile was a sweetness in the desert as she murmured, “No… I am Bint el Hareth.”

  The Daughter of Satan—a perturbing play on words. But her presence was warm and dizzying, and by the glow of the gasoline lantern none of her loveliness was hidden except by the broad jeweled silver girdle and its tinkling pendants. Even her feet were bare—tiny feet, nails tinted with henna.

  Her arms moved like amber serpents as she set aside her tall silver tiara. Her hair cascaded in shimmering ripples down about her shoulders hiding her breasts, and reaching toward her silver girdle…

  * * * *

  The far-off mutter of Arab drums was now drowned by the pounding of Reed’s heart. He caught her in his arms, and as he found her lips, his fingers slipped between the scented strands of her streaming hair, and caressed the veiled amber curves of her yielding body.

  Lovely as her shapely form had been to the eye, it was incredibly more wondrous to the touch…satin smooth, firm, yet yielding…a succession of soft mysteries that sent fire rushing through his veins.

  Her arms twined about him as her lips surrendered to his caress, at first tentative and quivering, then maddeningly possessive.

  A strange, endless kiss—such is what the Arab story-tellers in the bazaars of Cairo described. More than contact. It was a mutual enlacement and union of lip and tongue.

  Her ecstatic shudder, and the sighing exhalation of breath as she finally drew away, goaded Reed to flaming frenzy. But somehow, without ever wholly breaking from his embrace, her lithe body evaded complete surrender. She was eager and glowing, yet evasive…

  “Not now,” she whispered as his hands vainly clawed the heavy silver girdle about her waist. “Later. This is only a meeting and a promise. Don’t try. That girdle is locked on. You can’t remove it. Not tonight.…”

  Reed had heard of jealous husbands and of fathers who applied such devices to keep feminine frailty from going too far in unguarded moments.

  She sensed his next thought even before he could speak it.

  “Neither a file nor a locksmith could help us,” she whispered. Then, shaking her lovely head and smiling sadly, she added, “A jealous king was once in love with me. He was old and grizzled and knew that I would outlive him—”

  “Who?” Reed wrathfully cut in.

  “Naram Sin of Agade,” she whispered, pillowing her head on his shoulder.

  Naram Sin had been dead for more centuries than Reed had years!

  Then she continued, “If you want me, we will meet in Kurdistan. I am here on stolen time. But later—when the signs of heaven permit—it will be otherwise. Study the inscription on the base of that statuette. Learn the ritual to chant when the planets rise to their appointed places. Then I will materialize from moon glamor and star dust. But think well, Morton Reed…before you summon me in Kurdistan, first look at what remains of my long forgotten lovers…see what Naram Sin, King of Agade, paid for my kisses…”

  Her voice subsided to a sighing murmur. She was kissing Reed’s throat. The maddening touch of her lips suddenly became an excruciating pain. He gasped and thrust her aside.

  Blood trickled down his chest. Her thirsty lips were redder now.

  Bint el Hareth was more than a play on words. She was a night-wandering female demon!

  His color receded, but before he could break from her embrace, she caught his hand.

  “That is the law. And if you are ever to meet me in my house in Kurdistan—if you are ever to unlock the silver girdle—”

  Her finger tips indicated the soft curve just below her collar bone.

  Reed knew what she meant, but he hesitated.

  “It won’t hurt,” she whispered. “And the smallest drop will be enough…”

  The evening was already a madness. Reed bent down and brushed aside the heavy blue-black veil of hair. His teeth sank into the flesh he had so fiercely kissed. He felt the moisture of blood; but as it touched his tongue, there was a savage roaring in his ears, and his entire body seemed enveloped in a shroud of consuming flame. His knees sagged, and intolerable dizziness sent him plunging headlong through a paradoxical blend of incredible brightness and impenetrable gloom. He was falling…falling…dropping everlastingly through space…

  When his descent finally ended, he was still conscious, yet immeasurably dazed…

  * * * *

  His fingers were digging into the nap of a Persian rug. Bit by bit the blacknesses faded. He was in his tent, under the white glare of a gasoline lamp.

  He was alone. His lips tingled, and there was a stinging at the base of his throat. Then he remembered and tentatively touched the bite.

  His hand came back unstained; but clinging to his finger was a long, wavy strand of blue-black hair.

  And that seemed to prove that she had been more than moon-glamor and desert wizardry.

  He seized the lantern and bounded to the door of the tent. And when old Habeeb returned from the camp of the Arab laborers, Reed was still circling the tent, seeking footprints that would indicate the direction she had taken.

  The search was vain. The
old Arab muttered under his breath as he watched. He seemed to realize that his master was seeking something that would not have left any trace.

  For a long time Habeeb eyed the green basalt statue of a woman standing on a lion. He sniffed the lingering fragrance in the tent.

  “Bint el Hareth was walking by moonlight! I betake me to Allah for refuge against—”

  “Shut up!” snapped Reed. “Or you’ll be taking refuge from my boot! Tell me about this Bint el Hareth.”

  “She is a peril that walks by night,” Habeeb explained. “She sends fools—begging your honor’s pardon—out into the desert to find the key to her silver girdle. And they do not come back.”

  “Nevertheless, I’m going to find her.”

  “Don’t worry, sahib,” was the old Arab’s ominous answer. “She will find you. But it is possible that you may yet escape.”

  “Dammit! I don’t want to escape. I want to find her.”

  “Patience, sahib.” The old man smiled thinly and stroked his white beard. “They always do. What I meant was there is a way to avoid destruction. Only, no Arab has ever been able to use that method.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “It’s really very simple.” An ironic light burned in Habeeb’s narrowed eyes. “She is insanely jealous. Therefore avoid all other women, and she will not destroy you with her deadly kisses.” He sighed, shook his head, and repeated, “But that, of course, is utterly impossible for any Arab…”

  Reed nodded. Simple enough, after all. Keep your mind on archaeology. A tough contract sometimes, but it could be done.

  “And now, sahib,” resumed the old Arab, after an interminable silence, “I am going my way. You are the forgotten of Allah.”

  Before Reed could detain him, Habeeb was stalking out into the darkness.

  And for the remainder of the night, Reed studied the cuneiform text on the pedestal of the statuette. As Bint el Hareth had said, it described a fortress in northern Kurdistan. And the ritual to be chanted when the certain stars rose to the slits that cleft the dome of the turret was simple to an archaeologist…

  * * * *

  Reed finally set out for Kurdistan. His few belongings were packed on a donkey. Into that perilous, bandit-infested region no white man dared venture openly, so he went as a wandering native.

  The news of his mission seemed somehow to precede him. But that helped rather than hindered. The superstitious natives regarded him as a madman and thus an object of reverence. One whose wits were in paradise must be a saint…

  Weeks later, he reached his destination: a gray ruin perched on a foreboding crag that commanded the valley in which nestled a Kurdish village.

  What he found in the ruins was dismaying confirmation of what that strange girl who called herself Bint el Hareth had said. In a circular vault in the foundation were arched crypts. In each lay the body of a man. There were bearded, hawk-nosed captains, nomads in sheepskin jackets, dignitaries in silks now crumbled to dust. Their bodies were skin stretched over bone. They were as hollow as insects baked dry in the sun. Reed had heard of mummies made by nature; but on the forehead of each was the red imprint of a woman’s lips. This was a promise—and a warning.

  The last kiss of Bint el Hareth?

  But as his first wave of horror subsided, he resolved to stay. In this desolate waste there were only the women of the savage mountaineers—certainly no temptation!

  Then he searched the age-old ruin. Only a single turret was intact. In its uppermost stage he found the vaulted dome pierced by slits. Its circular wall was buttressed by monstrous winged bulls with human heads, bearded and mitred. Placid, sinister guardians of the cabalistic circle were outlined in mosaic on the floor beneath the crown of the dome.

  The madness of his quest no longer troubled Reed. He had dug too many buried marvels from the earth to doubt that Bint el Hareth would make good her promise. And that single strand of black hair told him that she had been more than illusion.

  He had long since traded his donkey for provisions. Now he had but a pair of empty saddle bags. And as the sun dipped toward the western hills, Reed descended into the valley to buy food.

  He strode down among the mud huts of the village. The chattering of the crowd subsided. His story had gone before him. And awed, furtive whispers of the natives told him that since the ruins were haunted by demons, he must indeed be a saint to survive such peril.

  He shouldered his haversack, now stocked with grain, cheese, and mutton. But before he could turn to ascend the slope, he saw that the Kurds were not as fanatic as he had expected. His supposed madness was an unneeded protection. At the further extremity of the village a white man sat cross-legged at the door of a mud hut. In front of him was an array of bottles and bandages.

  Filing toward him was a line of natives, men, women, and children. A missionary doctor, dispensing iodine, pills and religion. At his side, handing him instruments and antiseptics, was a girl with copper-colored hair, and skin like Jersey cream.

  * * * *

  Reed, despite his better judgment, joined the throng of ailing natives. The red-haired girl’s young, heart-stirring loveliness reminded him of the years since he had seen a white woman. She must be the ruddy faced, grey-bearded doctor’s daughter. He crowded closer, trying to catch her voice above the guttural Kurdish chatter and babbling.

  The simple severity of her unadorned, faded blouse and sturdy tweed skirt could not mask the gracious loveliness of her figure. Her mouth was sweet and generous, and her slender arms were made to close about a lover’s neck.

  And despite his recollections of Bint el Hareth, Reed’s hungry glance strayed toward the shadowed hollow between her pert breasts as she stooped to unwind a bandage from a grimy ankle. Then, straightening up to get a roll of fresh lint, she caught Reed’s trenchant gaze.

  She returned his steadfast regard. The ghost of a smile for an instant brightened lips shaped to murmur endearments between kisses exchanged by moonlight; then she remembered that that bronzed, bearded man with the haversack on his shoulder was another tribesman. She hastily turned toward the tray of instruments, but not before Reed noted the flush that crept from her cheeks down the whiteness of her throat.

  Warm and human and sweetly curved—Reed’s teeth gritted, and he resolutely turned. Bint el Hareth was a night-wandering witchery guarded by a silver girdle; and this red-haired girl was only a woman. Yet he was trembling from head to foot, and his brain was a reeling confusion as he pictured those warm roundnesses that could be cupped in his hands. That is, if he went back and revealed himself as a scholar and a white man.

  As Reed reached the fringe of the village he caught a glint of steel in the shadows of a ravine that opened into the valley. There was a yell, abruptly checked. A file of horsemen came charging from cover. A bandit raid!

  It was none of Reed’s business. He had paid for his supplies. He could reach the ruins during the confusion of the attack; but he knew what would happen to the red-haired girl. Flinging aside his haversack, he ran down the street shouting a warning. The traders bounded from their booths. Muzzle-loading rifles, repeaters, and curved swords blossomed from every mud hut; but before the defense could be organized, the raiders had closed in. A second detachment followed, and a third.

  The warning had only postponed the end. A man dropped at Reed’s side. He snatched the Kurd’s rifle and poured lead into the wave of advancing horsemen. The gun jammed. Clubbing it, Reed beat his way through the milling throng. The red-haired girl was somewhere at its further edge.

  A bearded tribesman, charging on horse through a huddle of screeching women, wheeled as he saw Reed. His dripping blade rose. Reed parried the scimitar cut, felt the glancing steel rake his shoulder, but he carried through, smashing home with his clubbed gun. The enemy ducked, but the rifle butt, driving through, crashed across the hor
se’s head. The beast reared, unseating its rider. And before the raider could regain his feet, Reed closed in. Kicking, jabbing and grappling, they wallowed in the red street. Horse and foot charged over them, but Reed kept his hold of that corded throat; and as the enemy’s dagger hacked and slashed him, he smashed the raider’s head against a boulder.

  Reed regained his feet. He had won a sword.

  The village was now a howling butchery. Crackling flames were gutting the woodwork of the traders’ booths. The shouts of the raiders and the shrieks of the surviving villagers drowned the voice that Reed still hoped to hear.

  He plunged headlong into the tangle, hacking right and left with his curved blade. He saw the red-haired girl huddled in a narrow passageway between two houses. Her garments had been torn to shreds, and her flesh was raked and bruised. She was scrambling to her feet, still clutching the short dagger that had cut down a bandit. But before she could kick clear of her dead captor, another raider saw her and closed in.

  Reed ploughed into the nightmare of murder. His reckless wrath and the confusion gave him his chance. He was hacked and battered and bleeding, but he made it—and in time to catch the bandit before he could whirl. The raider pitched forward in a gory huddle, shorn from shoulder to hip. Reed jerked the girl to her feet.

  “Head for the ruin on the cliff,” he shouted. He paused to pick up an abandoned rifle and a bandolier of cartridges.

  Once their path was blocked by a pair of looters; but before they could recognize Reed as an enemy, they dropped in a vengeful mill of steel.

  The archaeologist and his companion were now in the clear; but before they were beyond the red glow of the burning market stalls, half a dozen bandits saw the girl’s red hair and almost bare body and took up the pursuit.