Kesrick, page 7
Paths meandered here and there about the garden, but they were not paved with gravel. Instead, lumps and chunks and morsels of pure gold composed their lengths.
In the center of the garden, a fountain stood; all of pure rock-crystal was the bowl thereof, and from the vent cut diamonds spouted, flashing, into the air to clatter in the crystal bowl.
Here and there about the garden, perched upon the bronze or silver or golden boughs, mechanical Bird-of-Paradise, flamingoes, ibis or nightingales, fashioned with cunning artifice from precious metals, their feathers blazing with gems, flapped their wings and uttered melodious, if mechanical, song.
It was, the astounded travelers were forced to agree, a remarkable sight. But, also, it was depressing.
“We could each of us search this garden for a year,” groaned Kesrick, “without finding, in all this profusion of gems, the talismans we seek!”
“I fear me you have hit upon the truth,” Pteron sighed.
Gaglioffo could hardly believe his protuberant and sooty ears.
“Oh my masters,” he implored, “what else is there in all of the wide world to seek for, with such wealth lying all about us unguarded? Come, let us fill our pockets and begone, and once free from this uncanny palace, we can each purchase emirates or princedoms!”
They paid the greedy fellow no attention, each busied with his or her own grim thoughts.
“The Genii are remarkably stupid, as a race,” murmured the sorcerer. “But what better way to hide two magical talismans, than among acres of gold and gems? This Azraq obviously is possessed of a certain amount of low, brutish cunning. Well, there is nothing else for us to do but return to the Grand Hall, and employ the Mandiran, Melcarth aid me!”
He led them all beyond the entrance of the garden into the outer hall and there sought and soon found a small, secluded alcove where he could be alone with his meditations. Sternly bidding them not to disturb his body while it slumbered untenanted, he closed the door and knelt tailor fashion upon a priceless Isfahan carpet, and recited the Brahmin spell.
In the hall beyond, Kesrick was pacing restlessly to and fro, while the Princess was admiring her reflection in a mirror of burnished silver. Gaglioffo huddled miserably in a corner with his head in his hands, groaning dolefully and thinking of Treasure.
“How long, Sir Knight, do you think that it will take the sorcerer to locate the gems you seek?” Arimaspia inquired.
“Not long, I think,” said he.
“And then we will be gone from this palace, I trust?”
“As soon as can possibly be managed,” he affirmed. “Whereupon, I believe we should first return you to the bosom of your family, who will doubtless be relieved to learn that you are safe and that Rosmarin had been, if not slain, at least done away with.”
Her cheeks dimpled in a provocative smile that sent the pulses of the young knight racing.
“My wicked stepfather,” she said demurely, “has offered the hand of one of the royal Princesses in marriage to any hero or champion fortunate enough to destroy the scourge of the sea monster.”
“Is that the truth, then?” murmured Kesrick. Their eyes met in a long, deep exchange of glances.
His eyes glistened, and she smiled. “A mere formality, of course,” the Princess added, “for certainly my wicked stepfather never expected me to be rescued; but, you must admit, in the fine old tradition of the way these things were done in better days, even as St. George rescued the Princess Sabra from the Dragon, and was granted her hand.”
“Is it really true?” murmured the knight. “And doubtless a huge treasure, to boot?”
“Oh, goodness, yes! Sacks of rubies!” said Arimaspia (which made the eyes of Gaglioffo glisten).
The eyes of the knight and the maiden met in a long, eloquent, unspoken exchange of thought, but, as to what may have passed at that moment through their minds, or, for that matter, through their hearts, I will not venture to say.
The sorcerer had led them back into the vast front hall of the palace, where small clouds still wandered to and fro high up near the roof. And, even as the lovers—for, surely, that is what they were by this point!—continued staring dreamily into the depths of each other’s eyes, there occurred an untimely interruption.
Thunder rolled, like ten thousand kettle drums.
Lightning blazed, fiery yellow and fierce crimson.
A jet-black storm cloud rolled before the enormous door, spreading the stench of sulfur and brimstone which stung the nostrils and made them gasp.
And the Efreet appeared.
He was taller than the tallest pine, and uglier than imagination can depict. His prodigious strength was evident from the massive thews which swelled across his deep chest, his broad and sloping shoulders, and his long, apelike arms, whose hands were armed with hooked talons as long as the scythes of harvesters.
His round glaring eyes were like balls of yellow fire and his thick lips, peeled back in a grimace of evil glee, bared fangs like the tusks of elephants.
Gold hoops the size of carriage wheels dangled in the lobes of his pointed ears, and coarse hair fell across his shoulders from a topknot on the back of his skull, writhing like black serpents.
Thick bands of heavy iron clasped his wrists and ankles; a loincloth made of seven hundred square yards of red cloth hung about his waist; a triple necklace of tiger skulls clanked about his thick throat.
He was altogether hideous.
Such was Azraq the Blue; and moreover, he was well-named, for his hide was the color of indigo and his forked tongue was purple.
The Genie bent his fierce gaze upon the tiny humans that cowered between his feet, neither of them coming any higher than his ankle.
In one hand he brandished an immense scimitar of shining steel, a weapon so huge that it could easily have cloven an Alp in twain at a stroke.
“So,” he boomed, his voice like thunder, “there be thieves in my house! Thieves and vile burglars, I warrant, by Kashkash!”
Kesrick thrust the Princess behind him and stepped forward manfully, Dastagerd naked in his fist, but his heart quailed within his breast, for steel alone could not vanquish the giant Efreet, and with a sinking heart he knew himself helpless.
Once freed of its fleshly abode, the spirit of the sorcerer Pteron drifted through the walls of the great hall, traversed again the chambers bestrewn with treasure, and entered for a second time into the domed Garden of Jewels.
Everything that greeted his vision was exactly as it had appeared to the eyes of his flesh, with the exception that by the subtler senses of the spirit he could observe, here and there about the bewildering expanse of gold and jeweled trees, the flickering aura of magical objects.
There were quite a few of these within the Garden of Jewels, but he did not pause to ascertain their nature, searching instead for the pommel-stone, which he soon found, and the Ring of Soliman Djinn-ben-Djinn.
Once he had clearly marked and memorized the position of the two talismans so that he would be able to locate them without difficulty, once he had returned to his body, the spirit of the sorcerer left the Garden of Jewels and traveled back to the little alcove where he had left behind him his clay.
“How can you hope to engage such a ferocious giant in battle, my knight?” whispered the Princess Arimaspia in a faint, forlorn voice. “He could combat elephants or tigers with his bare hands; how, then, can any hero, even one who goes armed with an enchanted sword, dream of vanquishing the brute?”
“Where courage can’t suffice to win the day,” breathed Kesrick between his teeth, “then wit alone must enter in the fray.”
And with those bold, or perhaps despairing words, the young knight of Dragonrouge stepped forward and lifted a hand to catch the attention of the Efreet, bending above them like a bettling cliff.
“One moment, sir!” he called in a ringing voice. “Methinks from your words that you do be suffering from a misapprehension!”
Azraq the Blue, who had just lifted one bare, clawed foot the size of an iceberg to crush them underfoot as a man might step on bothersome insects, paused to eye the minuscule figure inquiringly.
“Eh?” he rumbled, the huge foot still hovering in mid-air.
And Kesrick smiled briefly, for in the extremity of his need he had chanced to recall something that the sorcerer Pteron had remarked a bit earlier.
BOOK THREE
____________________________
The Two Talismans
XI
THE GENIE APPEARS
The gigantic Efreet bent from the waist in order to regard the minuscule human figure that confronted him.
“What is it that you have to say, mortal?” he demanded in a voice like rolling thunder.
Kesrick was thinking rapidly; indeed, more rapidly than he had ever thought before. And he put a bold front on things, there being nothing else to do.
“You are quite correct, Sir Genie,” he shouted, “in your supposition that vile thieves and despicable burglars are on their way to rob you of your treasures!”
“I know as much, Mortal, for already have I caught them in the very act,” roared the Genie, bending above him like the frowning battlements of some enormous structure built by giants.
Sir Kesrick glanced swiftly about him: the nude Princess of Scythia cowered against the wall, her amethystine eyes huge and fearful; Gaglioffo, had crawled shudderingly beneath a heap of Persian carpets; the untenanted body of the sorcerer Pteron was well concealed in the alcove he had selected for its privacy. Kesrick again addressed the towering monster.
“But you are mistaken!” he yelled. “For we are not the thieves you seek; I am Sir Kesrick of Dragonrouge, the heir of an ancient and noble house of the Frankish kingdoms, and this maiden is the Lady Arimaspia, Princess of the royal house of the Scythians. Surely, you, who partake of the spiritual, can read our hearts and souls, and will realize that between us we command great wealth, and are hardly likely to burglarize the palace of one of the mightiest of all the Efreets!”
The ferocious visage of Azraq expressed now the look of bafflement. “Then why are you here!” he demanded, rather reasonably.
“Why, indeed!” shouted the young knight accusingly. “We, who have ever been friends to the Genii; we, who have never been the foes or enemies of your kind; why, think you, sir, we are come?”
The Efreet looked puzzled, burning eyes rolling widely. “I do not know,” he rumbled slowly, in a voice so deep that it caused their very bones to ache.
“Because, being apprised by a friendly sorcerer, now absent, that vile enchanters sought to rifle your treasures, O Azraq, and ever having been faithful friends to the Genii, we came hither on the flying steeds you observe yonder to frighten them away, to rescue your treasures from these burglars, and to give you warning of what was about to commence!”
The Efreet looked, if anything, vaguely flattered.
“That was very nice of you, mortal,” he rumbled.
“Fortunately,” said Kesrick, his voice getting just a bit hoarse from all this shouting, “we seem to have arrived just before the coming-hence of the villains who would rob you of your choicest treasures! Therefore, Sir Azraq, might I suggest that you ascend into the upper atmosphere (as my sorcerous friend apprises me that the burglars will be arriving by air), in order to guard the approaches of your magnificent palace, while we, already on the scene, will conceal ourselves from view, and await to confront the thieves, should they not be intercepted by yourself!”
“But—!”
“Hasten!” shrilled the young knight, his voice breaking. “The moment of their arrival is almost to hand! Do you wish to be robbed of the rarest treasures you possess?”
“Not at all,” rumbled the Efreet.
“Then do as I beseech you—ascend into the upper heavens, and survey all arrivals carefully, while we lurk hidden hereabouts in order to surprise your enemies in the very act of stealing your finest and rarest possessions!” urged Kesrick.
The Genie complied: a rolling cloud, bristling with fiery thunderbolts, gathered about his towering form, which dissolved into its primal substance. In a moment of two (save for the whiff of sulfur and brimstone), his giant form had vanished, and Kesrick collapsed, breathing heavily, into the angle of the wall.
The Princess, similarly exhausted from nervous tension, sagged against him and covered his face with breathless kisses, such was her admiration for his feat of persiflage and cunning.
“I did not really lie to the huge creature, you know,” he said when he came up, however briefly, for air. “Thieves are active about the premises, eager to filch some of his treasures; they are arriving (or have recently arrived) by air; and neither you nor I have, I trust, ever done aught to offend the Genii.”
“My hero!” she breathed, and was kissing him again. Well, before long, one thing led to another, as is often the case, and hands wandered to explore less familiar terrain, and matters were rather well along, given the hot blood of the young people, when the Magister appeared on the scene, freshly attired in his bodily vestments once again.
He put his hands on his hips and surveyed the two youngsters with pursed lips and a disapproving eye.
“I have no idea—” he began in severe tones, at which sudden interruption the two came suddenly apart, breathing heavily, and looking rather flustered; “I have no idea,” he continued, “what fevers may boil the blood of youth, but, surely, the two of you could find a more appropriate scene and point of time to conduct these furtive amours, since I expect the return of the Efreet Azraq at any moment.”
Kesrick adjusted his somewhat disheveled clothing guiltily, avoiding the sorcerer’s reproving gaze, while Arimaspia adjusted her flowing mane of sun-gold hair. “Actually, Magister,” said Kesrick, panting for breath, “all is quite nicely taken care of in that department.”
“Oh?” said the sorcerer inquiringly, elevating his brow.
“Indeed, Sir Sorcerer,” said the Scythian Princess, “just before your precipitous arrival upon the scene, Kesrick encountered the Efreet (as dreadful a monstrosity as ever I hope to see!) and deluded him with carefully chosen and artfully phrased half-truths.”
“Did he, indeed!” said Pteron, marveling.
“I but remembered me your very words, Magister,” said the young knight, “to the effect that they are simple-witted fellows, for all of their prodigious size and strength, and as easily cozened as children.”
“Well, then,” huffed the sorcerer, somewhat mollified. “But where is Azraq at this moment?”
Kesrick grinned and gestured overhead.
“Somewhere in the vicinity of the Boreal Star, for all I know or care,” he chuckled. “Eagerly vigilant to watch the approach of vile aerial burglars, of whose ominous plans I apprised him!”
“Well, then, by Acoran, Qat, and Abraxas!” swore Pteron feelingly, “let us get to work, for there is no telling how long your prevarications, skillful and persuasive though they doubtless were, will detain the Efreet! And where is that rogue, Gaglioffo?”
“Skulking under yonder carpets,” sniffed Arimaspia. The Paynim was soon roused from his hiding place by a few well-placed lusty kicks, and the three adventurers quickly retraced their steps, reentering again the domed enclosure where lay the Garden of Jewels.
The Princess regarded the sorcerer curiously.
“And did this Mandirain spell of yours enable you to locate the talismans which are, I am given to understand, the object of your dual Quest?” she inquired.
The sorcerer smiled with satisfaction. “On the matter of the hiding place of the gems,” he said confidently, “I am inerrant. Behold, my Lady of Scythia!”
And without faltering, Pteron strode to a cluster of pale jade grapes: groping behind them and untwisting a small golden wire, he produced in his palm the long-lost pommel-stone of Dastagerd, the Sword of Undoings, over which Sir Kesrick uttered crooning exclamations.
Pteron then proceeded to stroll rapidly down one of the garden paths, until he reached a spot at which he paused, bent, searched among the golden gravel at his feet with questing fingers, and rose to display with pride a mighty annulus of shining gold so huge it might have clasped the biceps of a Hercules.
“Feast your eyes upon the celebrated Seal-Ring of Soliman Djinn-ben-Djinn, master of all the Genii!” he proclaimed.
Gaglioffo plucked at his sleeve.
“And now, perhaps, O Brother of Lions,” breathed the faint-hearted Paynim, “may we not begone from this fearful palace of many perils before the befooled Efreet returns to devour our very bowels in his rage?”
“Vilely phrased,” sniffed the sorcerer, not deigning to give him a glance, “but the sentiments thereof I can only approve!”
They repaired again to the great hall, whereupon they resumed flying mounts, and once again, while Kesrick took before him in the saddle the naked Princess of Scythia, Pteron perforce must offer a place behind him to the ugly heathen. And, in less time than it would take your chronicler to describe the action, they had soared through the huge and open casement and found themselves buffetted by the winds of heaven, high above the peak of the mountain.
The sun was even now expiring on a crimson bed in the west, and the sky was heavily charged with a tumult of vapors which seethed in the throes of conceiving a storm. So furious were the howling winds that there was no conversation possible between the riders of the two aerial steeds, but Kesrick caught the eye of the sorcerer and gestured vehemently to the east. With an inward sigh, Pteron reined his ebony steed in the direction in which the Hippogriff was even at that moment hurtling, and followed his young friend through the airs of heaven.
They flew for some period of time, all of them anxious to put as much distance between themselves and the Efreet Azraq as could be afforded; over the rolling and grassy plains of Scythia did they fly, above the rivers Thermodon and Hyspanis. Erelong, the level prairies gave way to sandy deserts of the color of cinnamon, and a wall of Smoking Mountains could be discerned at the eastern horizon. Judging them to be sufficiently beyond the reach of the Efreet at this point, and becoming weary, they then by mutual decision, reached by gesturings, descended, for the hospitable and welcome greenery of an oasis had appeared beneath them amid the dusty tracts of desertland which stretched to either side.
