Mandricardo, page 12
Surely the harem of no emperor since the redoubtable Solomon himself had housed such a various horde of femininity! And from lips plum-purple, scarlet, palest pink fell in liquid syllables alluring and beckoning phrases, as woman after woman invited the two intruders to pause in their progress, to rest and refresh themselves, and to partake of the pleasures of their couch. It would have taxed the austerity of a thrice-devout hermit to resist such honeyed blandishments, and, indeed, the sorely tempted Limburger, his blood heated by gazing upon such curvaceous expanses of naked flesh, had already stretched forth a hungry hand to fondle the nearest succulent thigh, when the Enchanter sternly bade him resist this temptation as he had that of the feast that had been spread before them in the outer precincts.
“To so much as stroke a lock of the heads of these ladies, or to prod a ripe breast, is to instantly consign yourself to a doom everlasting and horrible,” predicted the Enchanter in gloomy tones. “For this is but another temptation which the cunning of the Marid has set like a trap athwart the path to his throne. Come, let us proceed.”
And averting their eyes from so much bared beauty, the two hastened through the enormous boudoir and, drawing asunder a hanging of lion-skins stitched together with silver wire, passed into the chamber that lay beyond, where an even greater temptation awaited the intrepid adventurer.
Here the shaken Limburger cried aloud and all but fell upon his knees, for great urns and casques lay thick-set to every side, and within each blazed and glittered a profusion of gems beyond the most perfervid dreams of Croesus.
There were alexandrines like split droplets of purple wine, topazes like the eyes of panthers, tourmalines like the flesh of ripe melons, emeralds green as lagoons, amethysts like shards of deepest sunset, opals whose ever-mutable hues ravished the entire spectrum. Greatly tempted, Limburger stretched forth one hungry hand whose trembling fingers lusted to scoop up a satrap’s ransom and pour it into his purse, but the burning and contemptuous gaze of Gorgonzola held an unspoken warning.
They passed on, to where rubies pulsed like live coals, and pearls were strewn like miniature moons, and zircons glittered like sharp ice-crystals, and lumps of amber held frozen in their smoky depths fantastic insects and bizarre reptiles, and sapphires sparkled like bits of twilight skies, and carbuncles gleamed condensed from the urine of lynxes. And again the greedy Limburger, unbearably tempted, would have buried both hands to the wrists in the glittering treasure, but for the stern reproof of Gorgonzola.
Passing further into the Cavern of Gems, they gazed upon garnets like clots of blood, great diamonds like stars fallen from the night skies, beads of jet like bits of polished darkness, sunstones of honey-hearted fire, chunks of turquoise like pieces of morning, fragments of rose-crystal beyond price, and stranger and even rarer gems of every color and description to which the travelers could put no name, for each was unique and one of a kind, having been prized from stones fallen from the moon.
This last temptation was the one which wrung Limburger, at least, the most severely: one handful, at the very most, two, and the plump and pasty servitor could have enjoyed the rest of his days in luxurious ease, with servitors of his own to wait upon his most idle whim. But needless to say, to have snatched up the smallest gem from the Marid’s trove would mean to fasten the fetters of thralldom about one’s own wrists for eternity.
The two emerged at length, sorely tried and inwardly shaken, into a vast rotunda which was the hub or nexus of elaborate perspectives of halls and galleries and arcades, which receded on every side into the distance, and which were all illuminated by the lurid flames of torches and braziers whose flames glimmered in long lanes the length of each vault or gallery, and each doubtless tended by the invisible hands of spirits sworn in servitude to the mighty Djinn.
In time the two came to a place where long curtains brocaded with crimson and with gold fell from all parts in striking confusion. Passing through this blaze of drapery they found themselves entering a vast tabernacle carpeted with the skins of tigers and of leopards. And here, at Gorgonzola’s insistence, they prostrated themselves before the ascent to a lofty eminence whereupon whirled a globe of fire; and throned upon this globe as upon some burning throne was a titanic figure which could only be that of the powerful Marid whose dominion this gigantic congeries of halls and galleries represented.
At his first glimpse of the Marid, Limburger turned as pale as parchment and all but fainted dead away, so hideous was his visage and so malign and threatening his demeanor. This Akhdar was, it seems, most aptly named, for his hide was as green as verdigris, and three eyes of scarlet fire blazed under scowling and beetling brows, the third being situated slightly above and between them. His beard was thick and shaggy, each strand thereof as thick as a viper, and great curling tusks gleamed through the forest darkness of his terrible beard. His brows were adorned with heavy horns like antlers, many-branching, and from the pendulous lobes of his ears hung polished human skulls, while threaded upon a thong, the right hands of apostate kings and coward knights hung about his massive throat.
Twenty times taller than a man was Akhdar, throned upon a gigantic chair hewn from black gneiss studded with carbuncles blue as fire, and in his right hand he clenched an iron club longer than a canoe, set with a bristle of terrible spikes.
His triple gaze brooded down on them as they groveled, and when he spoke his tones were not unlike the sound of distant thunder.
“Well, manlings, you have passed at your peril through the Three Temptations which are set as traps before my Seat, and I observe somewhat to my surprise that to none of the three have either of you succumbed, although I have always understood that the flesh of mortal men is frail and lustful and rarely unable to resist the temptation of its appetites. Natheless, I am bound by the law of Getiafrose (whose breasts are like the rosy domes of Shadukiam) to hearken to the words of whosoever passeth the Three Temptations unscathed, withouten ripping them asunder into quivering gobbets of dribbling gore, the which I am powerfully inclined to do. So speak, by Kashkash, and to the very point, for my patience is scant, and one of you at least is an individual with whom I mightily desire brief private converse concerning the matter of certain smaragdines…
The sound of distant thunder that was the Marid’s voice died into shuddering echoes, and Gorgonzola rose to his feet and made a profound salaam, and began to speak as follows.
18
Snatched!
The Tartar knight and his Amazonian lady-love departed by Magic Flying Carpet from the capital city of Upper Pamphyllia as scheduled and flew due east and just a trifle north. Obligingly, the Carpet expanded its dusty and threadbare self to a size sufficient to accommodate its two riders and their steeds.
It was Callipygia’s task to soothe and quiet the horses and the mule, the mule in particular, for plump little Minerva became rather restive when they flew through low-flying clouds. The two war-horses, while they probably liked the experiences as little as did Minerva, had, after all, their dignity to maintain in the teeth of adversity.
On the whole, they were as well-behaved as any two war-horses could have been, when expected to travel through the skies on a flying bit of floor-covering. I wonder if my reader or myself would have faced the novel experience with the same modicum of casual aplomb.*
They were making excellent time. The morning was clear and cloudless, and they had a brisk, spanking tailwind which helped to carry them along. They flew over the southern parts of the kingdom of Paflagonia, followed by the northern parts of the kingdom of Aphania, where Queen Petsetilla reigned with her Prince-Consort, Remsky. Then they flew over Crim Tartary, a country which had gone not-unrecorded in song and story; they passed, in point of fact, over the very battlefield whereupon the historic Battle of Rimbombamento was fought, whereon the famous Prince Bulbo, son of the usurping Duke Padella, defeated ten thousand giants and their dread potentate, the King of Ograria.
But these matters belonged to history and they considered them but idly, as they laughed and chatted, happy to have resumed their journey and to be on the way to Tartary.
“I say, you should have seen my face, m’dear, when I vanished in that Troll’s cave, only to pop up knee-deep in the bally sands of Aegypt,” chuckled Mandricardo.
“Well, you should have seen mine, when I saw you vanish!” grinned Callipygia. “I didn’t know what was happening. First I thought you had been destroyed, then I figured you had probably been turned into a toadstool … or even a toad!”
He grinned, twisting up the ends of his droopy black moustache; Mandricardo was in rare good humor.
“You pro’ly thought it was the Troll, gettin’ back at us for borrowing its nice, snug, warm cave and leavin’ the poor old blighter outdoors on a snowy night,” he chuckled.
Callipygia agreed that such had been her supposition. “But it couldn’t have been the Troll,” she reasoned, “although I suppose Trolls can have magic as well as anybody. Because the next thing that happened to me that was magical was a good thing. So it couldn’t have been the Troll. …”
She had told him earlier how she had been stymied of a means to cross the abyss the day after he had so mysteriously vanished from the Troll’s cave, and how some unknown magic force had whisked her a thousand miles away, plunking her down on a muddy road between two water-logged meadows in Lower Pamphyllia.
“Wonder if we’ll ever know what it was all about, eh, old girl?” he mused. Clear, sunny days sometimes put Mandricardo into deeply philosophical moods, like right now, as he pondered the Unknowable.
Except that the day was no longer clear and sunny. Not at all. In fact, a dense black shadow had fallen across the Carpet, plunging them in blackest gloom, and a brisk and oddly rhythmic breeze had sprung up from somewhere and was riffling the tasseled fringe of the Carpet.
In the next moment, Callipygia looked up to see what sort of a cloud had eclipsed the sun.
And in the very next moment, she threw back her head and screamed shrilly!
But it was by then too late for screams to do anybody any good, as Mandricardo would have been forced to agree. For, just then, he found himself upside down, standing on his head, jammed in between Bayardetto and Blondel, with the Carpet closed about him like a tent which had collapsed. He couldn’t see, he couldn’t move, and it was all he could do to yell, and when he did, no one could have heard it over the frightening neighing of the two horses, or the screaming of Callipygia, or the braying of the little mule, or …
… Or the thunder of mighty wings!
Gorgonzola had seldom waxed as eloquent as he waxed then and there before the fiery throne of the Marid. With all his wily eloquence, the honey-tongued Enchanter played upon the emotions of the cunning but rather simple Genie. According to Gorgonzola, the infamous Mandricardo had blackened the good name of Akhdar before the nations and had tarnished his reputation among the Genii.
“But why, O Enchanter, should this Tartar knight so curse and defame me, who have never ere this given him cause to be mine foe?” inquired the angry Marid, beating his great black wings together like claps of thunder and breathing fiery sulphur and brimstone. “In the name of Kashkash—why?”
That was an excellent question; it was, also, an eminently predictable one, and, in preparation for this moment, the Wicked Enchanter had taken the time to think out some good (if spurious) reasons.
“Overweening pride, O mighty Akhdar!” the Enchanter declared in ringing tones. “Having destroyed or at least discomforted ere this not only a Witch and a Wizard, a Giant and an Efreet,” he said, grandly skipping over the leading role which Mandricardo’s friend and companion, Sir Kesrick of Dragonrouge, had played in the above-mentioned destroyings and discomfitures, “there now remains no more dreadful adversary yet to be whelmed beneath his valor but a very prince and potentate of the famous tribe of the Marids! And what more redoubtable a Marid could be mentioned on the lips of men than that of—Akhdar!”
“There is, of course, something in what you say,” grinned the Marid without a shred of modesty. His grin was fatuous, and with one horrendous claw he preened the matted and filthy feathers which adorned his monstrous vulture-wings.
“And so he names you dastard and villain, not to mention caitiff rogue,” continued Gorgonzola glibly. “It is the lying claim of this vagabond of a Tartar that you hide here in your comfortable cave, while he rides the wide world issuing his boasting challenge to you to show yourself and face him in honorable combat.”
“I will crush him underfoot as a gardener crushes the unworthy snail,” growled the incensed Marid, gnashing his tusks ferociously, with a horrible rasping sound that made Limburger’s stomach heave queasily, and also made the little man glad that he had not paused to revictual himself at the Genie’s tables in the forecourt.
“I’m sure you will,” hissed the Wicked Enchanter pleasantly. “And when you do, a favor—a trifle, nothing more. There will be a faded bit of carpet about his person, which I would like as a souvenir of your victory. Tis but a little thing to ask!”
“It shall be yours,” rumbled the Marid.
“If, that is, you know where the boastful braggart happens to be,” continued the Enchanter anxiously. “For all I know, he may have left Upper Pamphyllia already, continuing on his way, spreading defamations on your character and name far and near.”
The scowling brows of Akhdar blackened, and his eyes, rolling with fury, resembled red-hot meteors. The third eye in the middle of his forehead now opened, it having been half-shut in a drowsy nap, and by its supernatural mode of vision the Marid was able to locate Mandricardo in an instant.
“He has, O Enchanter, and even at this moment flieth over the kingdom of Grim Tartary, whither I am bound upon the instant! It will take my powerful wings no great time to bear me to his side, and then the world shall bear witness as to whether or not the brave Akhdar ever blenched from battle!”
Gorgonzola drew the copper flask from beneath his robe and took a swig of its sorcerous contents.
“I will be there before you, O Akhdar,” he promised, as the giant pointed his massive iron mace at the rocky ceiling far above their heads. Thunder rolled; lightning flashed, blue as the flame of acetylene. The rocky dome cracked asunder and split, revealing a glimpse of the lurid and sanguine glow of sunset skies. Through this opening the gigantic and terrible Marid flew on whirling pinions.
“Remember, don’t forget about the carpet!” Gorgonzola called after the huge creature as he rapidly dwindled in the distance.
With dawn, the mother Roc had left her nest and the hungry, squalling brood of baby chicks it contained atop the snow-clad peak of Mount Caucasus, and soared aloft, hunting for the wherewithal to feed her hatchlings.
Immense beyond thought was she, a veritable Behemoth or Leviathan of the skies, her feathers bronze, copper, gold, the great wingtip-feathers blood-scarlet, as was her knurled crest or topknot, her beak and claws beaten gold.
She flew first across the Roof of the World to the seas which lay beyond China, in whose midst swam the mysterious, seldom-visited isles of Zipangu. Here she kept sharp watch—with eyes a thousand times more keen than those of hawk or eagle—for the Great Sea Serpent which betimes haunts these lonely Eastern waves.
Then she flew north to the utmost shores of the world, where the icy black waters of the Frozen Sea lash in their primal fury the rock-bound coasts of Hyperborea, Cimmeria, and Scythia. Floating aloft like some titanic and monstrous cloud, she searched with keen gaze the stormy waters, which were oft, as she knew from old, the chilly haunts of the enormous Rosmarin which were wont to bask upon the gritty shores or ride the ice cakes spawned from mighty glaciers.
Again her quarry eluded her searching gaze, so the great Roc turned her flight westward and soared aloft out over the measureless leagues of Mare Tenebrosum, the Sea of Darkness*, in search of the mighty whale.
Turning at length from her fruitless search, the Roc flew across the world. True, Oliphants and the huge, lumbering Monoceros were smallish game for her famished and greedy brood, but they were known to haunt the plains and jungles of Hindoostan, so she wended her way thither, pausing, albeit briefly, over the thick forests of the Rhineland, to eye speculatively a sizable Ogre. He was a particularly fine specimen, fat and juicy, but the Roc little liked the look of the great Spiked club he bore on one hairy shoulder. And Ogres, she knew, sometimes bite.
It was not until she hovered, vast wings enshadowing the world, floating on the calm skies above Crim Tartary, that she spied far beneath her a moving shape that seemed large enough to afford sufficient nutritive value to assuage the hunger of her hatchlings.
True, she could not at a glance identify the flying creature, whose singular shape—squarish or rectangular—and whose unlikely hue—faded scarlet, with minute markings of green, indigo, yellow—resembled no form of aerial life large enough for her to be familiar with. But, whatever it was, it should serve to feed her young, and the day was wearing on. So, folding those enormous wings that enshadowed an eighth of a continent, she plummeted from her great height, spreading her vans in the last moment to break her fall, as her outspread claws snatched the flying thing from the skies.
Then, bearing the Magic Flying Carpet and its contents like a snack wrapped in a handkerchief, she flew home to her nest atop Mount Caucasus.
19
Out of the Roc’s Nest
Arriving at Mount Caucasus, the mother Roc hovered on throbbing vans above its snowy crest, aimed, and—dropped her burden!
Within the folded carpet, jammed head-down between two sweating and very frightened horses, Mandricardo was in total darkness and helpless to extricate himself from his predicament. The worst thing, of course, was that he hadn’t the faintest idea of what was going on.
