E. Hoffmann Price's Fables of Ismeddin MEGAPACK®

by E. Hoffmann Price

  Reed knelt, snapped the rifle into line. Three shots—wild, hasty shots, but two of them pitched to the ground like bags of grain. The survivors broke for cover.

  Reed followed the red-head.

  Not a word as they clambered up the precipitous ascent. They needed their breath for escape. Finally, as Reed half dragged his exhausted companion into the deepening blackness of the ruin, he said, “The moon will soon rise. And I can pick them off as they come up the slope.”

  He struck light and dipped some water from a green-scummed, rain-fed cistern. But before he could wash the smoke and grime and blood from his slashed body, the red-haired girl interposed.

  “Let me help you—thanks, I’m all right—only a few scratches. But who are you? I couldn’t believe it when I heard you speak English.”

  He ignored the question.

  “Sorry about your father,” he commiserated as she bandaged his superficial wounds. “But when this riot quiets down, I’ll get you a native escort to Kirkuk. Or somewhere.”

  Her dark eyes widened. Then she said, “That was my uncle. I’m an orphan, and when he came to Kurdistan, I accompanied him. So—well, I’ve really no place to go.”

  She rearranged the tattered remnants of her dress, but there was no concealing the tempting roundness of her breasts and the fine gracious curves that swelled upward to meet the scraps of a skirt that now only reached half way to her knees. She was lovelier than Reed had realized, down in the village, and the glow of the fire coaxed alluring lights from her eyes as she sat crouched there, knees drawn up and clasped with her long, slender hands.

  Despite the terror of the earlier evening, she was smiling as though the languorous warmth of the fire had blotted out all but the present moment.

  She wasted no word on gratitude. None was needed. But the silence and her white presence were an eloquent torture.

  Reed leaped to his feet and stalked into the further darknesses. He had to get rid of that tantalizing loveliness. The stars were marching to their ordained positions. Bint el Hareth would soon appear; but that time was too far off for him to endure that red-haired stranger’s presence.

  Even as he pondered, nature conspired to defeat him. The penetrating chill of the mountains pierced his heavy woolen cloak. The girl was clad only in a few ragged threads.

  He stalked back into the courtyard, slipped out of his cape, and flung it about her shoulders. She caught his hand, and murmured, “You’ll be terribly chilly. You needn’t keep such a close watch. If the bandits knew we were here, they’d have been up here before now.”

  The touch of her fingers was seductive as a kiss. Reed seated himself on the rug beside her. He tried to ignore the warmth of her body as she drew closer and flung part of the heavy cape about his shoulders.

  “There’s plenty for both of us.”

  Her face was now a white vagueness in the gloom. Her bare legs had become seductive witcheries that tapered invitingly from slender ankles to the scanty refuge of fragments of a skirt.

  The firm pressure of her breasts against his side was maddening. She was infinitely more real than any night-walking demon. Reed’s resolution melted as her warm breath fanned his cheek and her red curls brushed against his throat. The gloom had become a whirlpool of long imprisoned desire.

  He caught her in his arms. Instead of drawing away, she pulled together the edges of the voluminous cape to imprison the warmth of their bodies. But it was her contented sigh that was ruinous.

  Peril and the night had brought them together, but it was not until Reed’s hand touched a firm, bare breast that they realized how far apart they were. She shivered, and not from the evening chill. Her half-hearted protest was a languorous murmur, and her arms closed about him as his free hand slid down the inward carve of her waist, and crept caressingly down the tattered wisp that still clung to her hips.

  “Our chances of getting back to civilization are zero,” she murmured. “I ought to make you stop… I would, too…but we shouldn’t waste the hour we’ve gained… I’d hate to die before I ever lived…”

  The bandits could return. He owed them a blood debt for those he had cut down during the raid. He would die—without ever finding Bint el Hareth.

  Her voice was now an inarticulate murmur, and her breath was coming in short, quick gasps. Their lips met, and Reed knew that the red-haired girl had drunk as deeply of loneliness as he had during all his wandering…

  * * * *

  And when, a long time thereafter, Reed noticed that the rising moon was invading their corner of the court, the witchery in her dark eyes convinced him of the exceeding folly of persisting in his pursuit of a phantom of the night. They would leave in the morning; turn their backs on that sinister ruin and let Bint el Hareth walk alone by moonlight…

  The red-haired girl seemed to sense his unspoken thoughts.

  “We’ve both been awfully lonely,” she whispered. “Oh, how I hated that village—but that’s all over, and maybe you’ll forget—whatever it was that made you look at me that way when you left the fire.”

  But before Reed found words, he heard a faint stirring somewhere beyond the gate. Instinct warned him. He snatched the loaded rifle and crept to the gateway.

  The raiders had returned. They were creeping up the slope, dark blots in the moonlight. Something had conquered their overwhelming fear of that devil-haunted ruin.

  Reed’s rifle snapped into line. A crackling blast. The savage whine of the bullet that ricocheted from a rock down the slope. Moonlight was deceptive. He had wasted a precious cartridge.

  “Run for the tower,” he shouted as he slammed the bolt home. “I’ll hold ’em!”

  There was no answering fire. No sound. Only those dark, creeping blotches that relentlessly advanced, slipping from cover to cover, tempting him to waste his ammunition until they could close in.

  He fired in desperation, but the derisive whine of wild bullets mocked him. His rifle was now empty. The bandolier of cartridges was by the fire. As he turned to retreat, a dozen gaunt Kurds popped up from concealment to charge up the slope.

  Reed bounded toward the baggage lying near the embers; but before he could seize the bandolier, he heard the red-haired girl’s voice. She was vainly struggling with the massive door that led to the turret.

  “I can’t open it!”

  Three long leaps brought him to her side. The massive iron grille-work screeched as Reed savagely wrenched it open. But the raiders were now in the court. A savage, triumphant yell; but, strangely enough, not a shot was fired.

  It was a close race, but Reed won by a hair. He thrust the girl across the threshold, then jerked the gate shut and slammed the massive bars into place. The Kurds could not break in without siege engines.

  They were safe, but unarmed and without food.

  “You fools!” Reed ventured a bluff. “This ruin is haunted. The demons will tear you to pieces.”

  “The peace upon you,” the leader respectfully countered. “But we know that you are a saint. Your holy presence will protect us. We do not intend to harm you. We only want the red-haired girl. Our chief ordered us to get her. We will wait until hunger and thirst drive you forth with the girl.”

  The Kurd salaamed and turned his back.

  As Reed followed his companion up the lordly staircase, he fully realized the irony of fate.

  He had mocked Bint el Hareth in her own home, almost within arm’s reach of her. And the girl whose loveliness had made him waver was with him. But he could carry on by surrendering the red-haired girl. Even though Bint el Hareth blasted him for his weakness.

  Surrender her now. In the end, they would be starved out anyway.

  “I’ll go back,” his companion said. “That’ll give you your chance. They’ll get me anyway.”

  But hearing it from her
lips seemed to alter things.

  “Stay here!” he snapped. “I’m going to the top story to think it out. There must be some way.”

  But Reed knew that there was no escape. The turret overlooked a precipitous drop of hundreds of feet. The bandits guarded every exit.

  * * * *

  As he entered the upper chamber of the turret, the emptiness and desolation seemed vibrant with life. He glanced through the slits in the vaulted ceiling. The stars were rising to their appointed positions.

  Reed frowned perplexedly. Some calculation had been in error. The stars that governed the return of Bint el Hareth would soon be at the marks sculptured by some forgotten astrologer.

  Bitterness now corroded Reed’s heart. Bint el Hareth would appear, and her jealousy would destroy him.

  He raised his arms, lifted his eyes to the slits in the ceiling, and cursed the stars as they relentlessly marched toward their culmination; but they did not hear.

  Reed was not afraid; but the iron was biting deeply into his soul. He seated himself on a block of granite and for a long time stared at the vague, mitred and bearded gods whose faces loomed monstrously in the shimmering gloom. They were remorseless as fate, but less malignant.

  Reed’s skin began to twitch. The gloom was becoming a live and vibrant creature. He wondered who would carry his body down to the nethermost vault to place him with those others who had been blasted by Bint el Hareth’s wrath. How could a man’s body become like the shell of a sun-dried insect?

  Let her appear. Let it be over with. She might smile before she blasted him. He rose, and taking his position at the circle, he began reciting the ritual.

  Scarcely a dozen syllables had thundered from his dry lips when he felt eyes probing the darkness behind him. He whirled.

  The red-haired girl was at the threshold. Her body was a vague white glamor, and her face was a heart-shaped blot.

  “Get out!” barked Reed. “I’m trying to think! Don’t disturb me.”

  Instead of retreating, she advanced. Reed’s hand flashed out to detain her. She eluded him and stepped toward the circle at the center.

  That was the ultimate sacrilege!

  But before his wrath could find voice, the red-haired girl spoke.

  “Your fate is still in your hands, Morton Reed. Your choice is still yours.”

  How could she have called him by name?

  But that was swallowed by a greater wonder: she went on to speak of his search for Bint el Hareth!

  “But how—how can you know—” he finally gasped.

  “Because—” She paused. He could just distinguish the whiteness of her hands against the waist band of what remained of her skirt. It slipped down in a heap about her ankles. “Because I am Bint el Hareth.”

  Her words burned into his brain as his eyes saw what gleamed at her waist: a broad silver girdle, flashing with uncounted sapphires. This was some monstrous trickery! Down there in the court, by the dying embers of their fire—

  “How—”

  “Raise your eyes, Morton Reed,” she softly murmured, “I have other features as well…”

  * * * *

  Her voice had in some inexpressible way changed. It was low and vibrant and heart-stirring and strangely modulated. Despite the alluring vagueness of her body, he was certain that its contours had unaccountably altered. Some strange change was going on before his very eyes. And as Reed looked her in the face, he could no longer be sure that her hair was red, or that it was not the deceptive play of brightening starlight that seemed to make her cheekbones ever so slightly more prominent and give her features a faintly aquiline cast.

  “I am indeed Bint el Hareth,” she continued. “It was written on the books of fate that that red-haired girl be killed in the raid. What difference if I borrowed her body, or shaped one for myself of moon glamor and star dust? I have already reshaped her to the form you desired.”

  “Then—down there—in the court—”

  Bint el Hareth smiled.

  “That was still her body, and some of her lingering personality.”

  “Then you’re not jealous?”

  She shook her head. “Old Habeeb gave you a garbled tradition. Not my wrath, but my more than human kisses left my lovers as you saw them. They accepted their doom and were glad.

  “The choice is yours, Morton Reed. Those bandits down there cannot touch what little is now left of that red-haired girl’s flesh.

  “Deny and disown me, open the gateway, and go in peace. Your life will be long—but you will never forget the silver girdle that you could not remove.”

  She paused and ran slender fingers through her hair and withdrew a small key.

  “And this,” she continued, handing it to Reed, “is the key of doom. If you still have the courage and the will.”

  The night had become a maze of wonders. Reed saw that Bint el Hareth had blossomed in the light of stars risen to their culmination. Then for a moment he pictured those desiccated bodies ranged in the crypts below.

  “It would be worse to wander with only the memories of a girdle without a key,” he finally said.

  Key in hand he stepped into the circle; and the splendor of her eyes foreshadowed the consuming fire of her uncounted strange kisses…

  * * * *

  And all the while, the leader of the Kurdish bandits watched his men heaping wood in front of the iron grille.

  “That should be enough,” he at last decided. It had taken a long time to find enough fuel in that barren waste. It took almost as long again before the massive bars reached a red heat. Then sword-strokes bit into the glowing metal, and the bandits poured through the breach.

  Sunlight was filtering through the slitted dome of the upper chamber when they reached its threshold.

  “Wallah,” muttered the bandits, “where is that red-haired feringhi wench? Not even a cat could have leaped through those small slits.”

  Then they saw Reed lying in an alcove between a pair of winged bulls. They recoiled, then paused to wonder what dream could leave such ecstasy on any man’s face.

  “The saint is sleeping,” whispered the leader. “But see the print of her lips on his forehead. Doubtless—though Allah is the knower—he utterly destroyed her for trying to seduce him.”

  “Ay wallah,” echoed another in an awed whisper, “let us leave, before this pious man likewise destroys us for disturbing his sleep.”

  WELL OF THE ANGELS

  Originally published in Unknown, May 1940.

  Mosul was asleep that afternoon. That dingy hell on the Tigris always dozed through the unbearable heat of the day. Dave Cooper, however, had not learned to sleep, so he sat under the sluggish electric fan in his office and sweated. He cursed the oil company and its five-year grip on him. He cursed the flies, the dust, the glare that came in through the jalousies which screened the windows.

  He drained his glass of warm soda and brandy. In the anteroom, Hassan, the middle-aged office boy, snored contentedly. Somehow, between refilling glasses, Hassan could manage naps. This infuriated Cooper. He said aloud, and bitterly, “Three years, six months, and eleven days more of this hell’s hole!”

  He blinked and squinted at the calendar. His voice cracked a little when he corrected himself. “No, damn it! Three years, six months, eleven and a half days. Today’s not over!”

  He hurled his glass against the filing cabinet. He liked the sound. He hoped that someone’s bare feet would step into the fragments. He hoped especially that it would be Hassan. He disliked that chinless Arab and his mission English; though most of all he hated anyone who could sleep.

  Cooper’s predecessors, Hassan cheerfully announced that first day, had either died or gone mad in less than three years. “To be exact, sir,” the wizened fellow proudly summed up, “the averag
e is two years, eleven months, twenty-four days. Forty-seven percentums die of diverse causes. Fifty-three percentums are carried to Bagdad for observation and treatment.”

  But out of that sleeplessness and misery came an idea; suddenly, it seemed to Cooper, though actually he had been brooding on it unconsciously ever since hearing bazaar gossip about the peculiar nature of Mosul and the adjoining country. This was something the company had not anticipated. He walked swiftly into the anteroom, where Hassan squatted on the floor.

  He was snoring. Flies buzzed about his gaping mouth. He wore a skullcap, a dirty aba, and no shoes. Cooper booted him. Hassan muttered. A second kick made him blink and say in Arabic, “I betake me to Allah for refuge from Satan!” Then, looking up: “Ah wah, sahib! Yes, sir. What is your pleasure, sir? Another brandy-soda, sir? At once, sir.”

  For once parrot-like mission English did not irritate Cooper, nor servility, either. “No. I want some lessons in magic.”

  “Magic, sahib?”

  “Exactly. Don’t pretend you don’t understand. This is the old plain of Babil. Babel they called it at the mission school. Everyone knows the place is filthy with magicians.”

  Hassan’s mouth opened. He gaped and stood there fingering his straggly beard. Then he grinned, winked. “None of the others thought of that. My word, sahib! You will fool the company, what?”

  One could not just walk out. There was a train to Bagdad, yes. But life ended shortly after one quit the protection of the company and the King of Iraq. Prowling Arabs and Kurds attended to that. Inviting murder and robbery just to spite an employer was pointless.

  A supervisor, coming up from Bagdad one week, listened to Cooper’s grief. He sighed wearily and said, “You’re here, and you’re staying here. I’m sorry, old fellow, but that’s how it is. A magician might get you a transfer, but nobody else.”

  A magician. Cooper, looking back, smiled craftily. Wouldn’t good old Mr. Burleigh look foolish when the news got to Bagdad!