E. Hoffmann Price's Fables of Ismeddin MEGAPACK®

by E. Hoffmann Price

  Elias Koja’s standard went down before the rush. Tokatmur, second in command to Bikijek, fell under the fury of swords which followed the final flight of arrows. And it was like the moves of a chess game long reasoned out in advance: one-two-three, and checkmate.

  The apprentice king escaped, and so did Bikijek, one leaving behind him a throne, the other losing an army. And when the trumpets sounded recall from cutting down the fugitives, Timur formed his troops and raced on to Samarkand.

  As he rode back through the gates from which he and Olajai had so narrowly escaped, the citizens who crowded the streets and packed the housetops, began to shout, “Sahib Karan! Lord of the Age!”

  He had conquered a city by dust, and he had triumphed over an army by fire: and Olajai said, “When the Jagatai princes meet they’ll make you Grand Khan of Samarkand.”

  She was right. Hussein had said as much; and the Barlas clan, Timur’s uncle’s kinsmen, were behind him. But as he rode toward the palace vacated forever by Elias Koja, Timur made plans of his own.

  That night, serving men dragged monstrous trays into the banquet hall: camels roasted entire, and sheep; and there was horseflesh, and leather trays heaped with rice and millet. Others set out jars of wine, and jars of fermented mare’s milk, and flagons that only a Mongol could drain.

  Eltchi Bahadur was there, roaring as on the battlefield; Hussein, sleek and smooth and handsome as a panther; and the Barlas clan, flat-faced, grim and slant-eyed; Turki and Mongol in silken tunic and silken khalat. Though Togluk Khan the tyrant had died a natural death, horsemen still raced northward to deny his son any chance of an equally quiet end.…

  It was complete; complete, except for two things: Timur Bek was not present, and the grand khan’s dais at the head of the great hall was empty. Lords and captains, beks and émirs, ranged in rank on either side, with that one high place vacant: election day in Samarkand.

  Some laughed. Some muttered. Ali sniffed the savor of roasted meat, and wine ready for the drinking. But Timur, Sahib-Karan, the Lord of the Times, was late.

  Then the drums rolled and the long trumpets brayed. Guards marched in, escorting a horse-tail standard. In the courtyard soldiers shouted, “Hai, Bahadur! Sahib Karan, Timur, Grand Khan of Samarkand, Khan of the Jagatai!”

  The uproar of the rank and file told the émirs and the beks how they had better vote; and they knew that wholesale desertions would follow an unpopular choice. Most of the Jagatai princes agreed with their men; but some scowled. For Timur to make a point of delaying his entry until all the others had arrived was laying it on too heavily; and for him to have the horse-tail standard carried before him was taking too much for granted.

  But the shouts from the court gave the lords no choice.

  Then they saw who preceded Timur: a bearded man in the ragged robe of a darvish; a man who protested, a man who, though handled with respect, was being hustled into the hall, and toward the vacant high place.

  At the foot of the dais, Timur halted with his barefooted companion. He raised his hand, and the shouting ceased. “O Men! In the days of your grandfathers, Kazagan Khan the Turk could have taken the throne of Samarkand but this he did not do; instead, he set up one of the blood of Genghis Khan, the Master of All Mankind, and used all his force to maintain one whom no one would deny or envy!

  “Here is the darvish, here is the Guest of Allah, here is Kaboul Shah Aglen, directly descended from Genghis Khan’s son Jagatai! Here is one who cares so little for power that he turns his back on thrones, and contemplates the splendor of Allah! Here is one with wisdom, not pride.

  “Where we have each been kings, there has been no strength, and from too much freedom, we had an invader on our necks! So let this man be Grand Khan, for there is not one of us too proud to serve him!”

  The shouting drowned the protests of the darvish. He could not deny his duty. They put an embroidered khalat over his ragged gown; they made him ascend the dais, and each prince in turn bowed nine times before him, as the ancient custom prescribed.

  And when the banquet ended, the following noon, Timur Bek went to his own house, where Olajai waited.

  “So you gave away a throne? After the Presence that came to you on the hill at Kivak?”

  Timur was a little drunk, and he was tired, and he was hoarse from song and shouting. “He is the ninth generation, and all things go in nines with the race of Genghis Khan. Your brother and the others would soon turn against me—yet I can hold them together, serving him. And we won’t have too many kings.”

  She looked up, smiling; her disappointment was gone. “The Presence will return to you, Timur.” Then, just in the interests of discipline: “Allah, but you’ve slopped wine all over yourself, you’re an awful looking mess for a King-Maker, you’re as bad as my grandfather. You’re ready to fall on your face!”

  [1] Editorial note: Tamerlane, the name we know so well, is a Persian-ized corruption based on a pun comparable to “Heel, Hitler.” Timur is the true name; and “Bek” or “Beg” is simply prince or lord.

  LADY OF THE MOONLIGHT

  (Also published as “Death Spurs”)

  Originally published in Spicy Mystery Stories, December 1936.

  The tall, sun-tanned American who impatiently paced up and down the gallery that overhung the reeking courtyard of the governor’s palace in Kirkuk ceased cursing in a rumbling monotone. Arnold Kane, sent to Kurdistan by the Cosmopolitan Museum, had not run out of profanity. Being an archeologist, he had an uncommon vocabulary that started alphabetically with Arabic and Bengali. He had just worked his way through Turkish, and was starting on Urdu.

  What made him pause for inspiration was a glimpse of the newcomer who with his servants was just entering the courtyard; a short, erect, aquiline-featured man with a deeply-lined face and a neatly trimmed beard. By the red flare of torches he recognized Dr. Franz Eisenbaum, a rival archeologist from Berlin.

  “So that’s why that hatchet-faced louse, Daoud Basha, has been stalling!” muttered Kane, reverting to unscientific Americanese.

  It was plain enough now. The governor, instead of granting Kane an audience so that he could make arrangements to excavate in the three thousand year old Babylonian site on which the present half-ruined fortress of Kirkuk had been built some fourteen centuries ago, had waited for the rumor to circulate over Europe. Now that Eisenbaum was on the job, the basha would make the rivals bid against each other for the right to dig in a site whose richness had until just recently been unknown.

  A full moon was rising; but Kane ignored its copper-blazoned splendor. Nor had he any eye for the silver glamour that later displaced the first ruddy glow, making the foul-smelling courtyard below him an enchantment of massive archways framing blue black shadows into which the Basha’s white-robed servants and those of the rival scholar fitted like tall specters on their way to a tomb’s mouth.

  Kane started, sensing that he was no longer alone in the darkness. Then he recognized the voice of the turbaned form that had materialized beside him. Daoud Basha’s negro steward was saying, “Follow me, Effendi, the master will receive you at once.”

  He followed the negro downstairs, skirted the cesspool of a court, and heard his own footsteps echo in the sudden and uncanny silence that now hung like a heavy shroud over the dilapidated fortress. Odd that the servants were not chattering and chanting bawdy songs. Kane shivered, and wondered why a chill had trickled down his spine.

  Presently, in the audience hall at the end of that long, torch lighted passageway, he found Daoud Basha, uncomfortably perched in a gilded French chair. The governor’s face was like a rusty hatchet. There was something furtive about his manner as he greeted the American.

  Seated beside him was an oily Arab with three chins; Hussein, a dignitary from the court of the King of Iraq. Like Dr. Eisenbaum, a new arrival. The reasons behind the stall
ing became more and more apparent: no game until the King’s watchdog had decided on the size of the pay-off.

  And then Eisenbaum himself entered. The rival archeologists exchanged bows as stiff as Egyptian sculpture and cold as the desert moonlight.

  “Gentlemen,” began Daoud Basha, “this matter of excavation. I have been thinking.” He paused, doubtless groping for a sweet word that meant extortion. Hussein’s little eyes were black sparks. The King of Iraq was too much of a gentleman to mention figures; but the pudgy Arab wasn’t!

  “The fortress is haunted,” continued Daoud Basha, his hatchet face defiantly hardening. “There is a night-wandering female demon. A spirit who has lived here since the infidels, thousands of years ago, built the city you now want to excavate. So there will be no digging.” But the ensuing silence did not hang long. A woman’s voice came lilting from some black depth of the castle. It was scarcely a song. It was more like a recital to the thumping of a drum.

  “Agrat Bat Mahal, lady of the moonlight.

  Queen of demons. Queen of Zmargad.

  Beloved of Solomon, the Great King.

  She danced before him by moonlight.

  With the myriad demons who serve her…”

  It was an incantation, a curse that whispered of the Babylonian mound which Kane or Eisenbaum would invade; and it was a warning.

  The American shuddered at the eeriness of it; then he wanted to hear more of Agrat Bat Mahat, whose lovely, night-wandering demons with soft voices and gilded bodies and seductive, inviting gestures tricked lonely travelers to strange deaths in the desert.

  Only then did Kane realize the length of the break in Daoud Basha’s words. He looked up. The Turk’s hatchet face had become a sickly grayish green in the flickering taperlight. His mouth moved soundlessly. Finally he croaked to the steward, “Stop her! Allah curse her, why does she sing that song? Have her flogged, Abbas!”

  The trembling negro’s bare feet padded across the tiles. The governor regained his composure, then said, “One of the maids is singing, Allah rip her open! That will attract the demon.” Hussein was staring into the shadows. Eisenbaum tugged his beard.

  Kane said, “But this matter of excavation, your Excellency.”

  “No, by Allah!” snapped Daoud Basha. “She—the queen of the lilin—came to me last night—the first night of the full moon—warning me—of a curse—of a drinking of blood—”

  Kane’s taut nerves snapped.

  “Listen, you damned fool! Cut out this childishness and let’s get to business. Or I’ll tell the King of Iraq he’s got a superstitious old woman on the job in Kirkuk. Perhaps you’ll recollect his majesty is fairly modern!”

  The truth and the audacity of Kane’s retort lengthened the Turk’s face. He flashed a glance at Hussein. The oily Arab from Bagdad might displace him.

  “Excellency,” Eisenbaum smoothly cut in. “I for one would not laugh at old tradition.”

  Kane’s teeth gritted. His outburst had played into his rival’s hand.

  “Inshallah,” groped the governor. “If it please Allah—”

  He said no more. The sound from somewhere in that ancient fortress would have refrigerated anyone’s liver. His weather-beaten face became the color of pistachio ice cream.

  Kane didn’t blame him. That awful, vibrant howl sounded too human for a jackal, too animate for a ghost. It was distressingly feminine. That made it worse.

  A gust of chilly air unaccountably invaded the somber room. The wax tapers flickered out, leaving the audience hall a cavern of shadow broken by moonlight filtered through iron bars.

  Daoud Basha was making gurgling sounds. Hussein was scarcely more articulate. They were too frightened to run. Kane’s teeth gritted. If a Turk and an Arab hadn’t been watching him, he would have set out on foot for Bagdad. And not at a walk!

  A spindle of white, pulsing mist was gliding toward them. It gleamed phosphorescently. There was not a sound now; only that column of throbbing ghastly fog.

  Worse, it was becoming human. It was condensing into a woman’s graceful, pearl white body. Her breasts were cupped by silver hemispheres, and her waist encircled by a girdle whose pendants drooped half past her hips. The rest of her was bare; but the evil beauty of her smile blotted out the loveliness of that undulant, sensuously swaying body.

  There should be a tinkling of anklets as she advanced; but the only sound was the hoarse breathing of the three who frozenly faced her.

  A gust of overpowering sweetness was wafted into the moonglow. It was like the heavy fragrance of flowers at a funeral.

  “Do not listen to the sacrilegious spoilers and vandals who would disturb the dust of the dead,” warned that evilly smiling woman. “The dust of this land never dies. It will drink your blood, Daoud Basha, you whose lips have kissed mine by moonlight.”

  “The queen of the lilin,” croaked Daoud Basha. “The accursed of God—the dancer by moonlight—the drinker of children’s blood—”

  “Shut up, jackass!” snapped Hussein. But his voice trembled.

  The apparition faded into blackness. Released from the paralysis of terror, the Turk dashed his turban and sword to the tiles.

  Kane struck light to a taper.

  “I betake me to the lord of the daybreak for refuge against Satan the Damned!” quavered Daoud, staring at his discarded tokens of manhood and power.

  Abbas, the blade steward, came running down the hall.

  “Effendi, none of your family’s maids was singing,” he declared; then he halted, seeing the brand of terror on the master’s face.

  “Pack up whatever you can!” croaked Daoud Basha. “We leave at once—out of this accursed house—Shaytan fly away with Kirkuk—”

  “Wait, your Excellency,” interposed Kane, catching the Turk by the arm. He saw a chance to regain what his previous outburst had lost him. “I will persuade the queen of demons to leave. Provided you give me permission to excavate.”

  “Drive her out,” gasped the trembling Turk. “And the concession is yours. By God, by the Very God, by the One True God, I swear it! And may all these bear witness to my word.”

  Kane sighed from his ankles. Not even a Turk would dare violate the threefold oath even the most worthless Moslem holds sacred. And Eisenbaum’s spear-thrust glance confirmed Kane’s assurance. The American knew that he had outwitted his rival.

  The queen of demons, he now recollected with the warm glow of one whose duties have kept him for some time from amorous toying about, had remarkably shapely legs, and dainty breasts that were poems in ivory. Finding out what was wrong with Kirkuk might have pleasant sidelights! Her kisses had frightened Daoud Basha to a state where feminine beauty was wasted—but if Agrat Bat Mahat, whoever she was, tried to warn Kane from his task, he’d not be frightened away so easily!

  “Allah upon you!” muttered the Turk. “Last night she tried to lead me to some underground place she called Aralu. The hell of the infidels whom Allah cursed because they made graven images of bulls with the heads of men.”

  Kane shrugged; and as he followed Dr. Eisenbaum from the audience hall he whispered, “Listen, Herr Doktor. I’m wise to your tailor-made demon. Nice work, but you’re through.”

  “You, however,” was the frosty retort, “are not.”

  He followed an attendant to his quarters, leaving the American to do likewise.

  Kane dismissed his servant and snapped off the battery-operated lamp he had brought in his kit. Sleep, however, was far from his design. He softly unbolted the door of his bare, primitive room and stepped to the balcony. The bulk of that ancient pile oppressed him. How could he plumb its uncounted crypts and passages?

  And how to find that girl whose unearthly loveliness had made him for a moment share the terror of Daoud Basha and the pudgy Arab from Bagdad?

 
He oriented himself and then set out for the section where the women of the Basha’s household were quartered.

  He scaled a column that supported the canopy, crept across the flat roof, hugging the shadow of the parapet. There he dropped to a lower level. He halted in a space littered with rugs and cushions and partially protected by an awning: a nook where the wives and female servants of the basha loafed away their days.

  The stairway led to a realm of peril. One whisper of his intrusion, and even if he escaped with his life, his mission was finished.

  He crept from the protecting shadow, but half way to his objective, a woman emerged from the stairway. Too late to retreat!

  She was barefooted. Voluminous silken trousers masked her hips and legs, but her torso was revealed through her filmy jacket. She was full breasted, pleasantly plump, yet shapely. Her half veiled flesh gleamed alluringly through moon-kissed gauze. Her rounded arms were aglitter with bracelets.

  Kane, despite his peril, noted the brocaded satin cap with its festoons and pendants of broad golden coins that toyed with her copper-colored hair. Her face was exquisitely lovely. Her smile was a sensuous crimson splash against the whiteness of her skin.

  She was beckoning. Kane, trembling violently, sighed his relief. This must be one of the basha’s wives. Circassian women are a luxury.

  “You are the Amerikani scholar,” she murmured, catching his hand. “I was frightened until I saw that you were taller than that Yahudi, and had no beard.”

  The purring contempt with which she referred to Dr. Eisenbaum sent a thrill through Kane.

  “I’m Azadeh,” she added. “I was on my way to beg you to find the Lady of the Moonlight, who makes this palace a madhouse.”

  Her voice was for a moment as troubled as her eyes.