Collected Short Fiction, page 148
Then his croaking voice was demanding in Arabic that the golden doors be opened. He heard a subdued stirring beyond the xanthic panels, but they did not move.
He whispered the ax-song of Iru, and hammered upon the mocking golden valves with the battle-ax. And yet they did not open.
Still he beat upon the gates, and shrilled dry-voiced curses, and croaked Aysa’s name. And shining silence taunted him.
Then the dominating purpose that had driven him through terrible days was broken. His reason found sanctity in madness from suffering in a land too cruel for life. And Price was left the creature of delirium.
13. The Golden Land
THROUGH several days Price drifted lazily back from temporary insanity into slow awareness. He was among Arabs. Arabs who dressed oddly, and spoke a curious archaic dialect. They were his friends, or rather, awe-struck worshippers. They called him Iru.
He recalled vaguely that somewhere he had heard this strange dialect before. He had even heard the name Iru. But it was several days before he remembered the circumstances of his hearing either.
He lay upon rugs and cushions in a long room, dark and cool, with smoothly plastered mud walls. A guard of the strange Arabs was always near him. And a man who seemed their leader had come many times to see him.
Yarmud was his name. A typical Arab, tall, thin-lipped, hawk-nosed. Price liked him. His dark eyes were straight and piercing. He carried himself with a simple, reserved dignity. Upon his lean, brown face was fierce, stern pride, almost regal.
Yarmud plainly was the ruler of these Arabs; yet he appeared to defer to Price as if to a greater potentate.
Price slept most of the time. He made no exertion save to drink the water and camel’s milk, to eat the simple fare, that his hosts offered him where he lay. He did not try to question them, or even to think. The hardships of his terrible march upon the tiger’s trail had brought him near death, indeed. Tortured body and fevered mind recovered but slowly.
Then one afternoon, when Yarmud entered the room, a stately, august figure in his long, oddly fashioned black abba, Price awoke. His mind was suddenly sane and clear again. He rose to meet the old Arab, though his limbs felt yet weak.
Old Yarmud smiled flashingly in pleasure, to see him rise.
“Salaam aleikum, Lord Iru,” he called. And, to Price’s astonishment, he dropped to his knees on the floor.
Price returned the immemorial desert formula, and Yarmud rose, anxiously inquiring about his health.
“Oh, I’m coming round all right,” he assured the Arab. “How long have I been here?”
“Five days ago your camel—or the camel of the maiden Aysa, who went to wake you—came to the lake. You, Iru, were fastened upon the beast, with a halter-rope around your body and the pommels of the saddle.”
He knew, then, that this must be the town of El Yerim, from which Aysa had fled. These people thought him the legendary king of Anz, awakened to free them from bondage to the golden beings. No great wonder that, since he had ridden out of the desert with the weapons of the ancient ruler, looking more dead than alive.
“The mountain where Malikar lives,” he asked, “is it near?”
Yarmud gestured with a lean arm. “Northwest. The journey of half a day.” Price realized then that his hejin, when it tried to turn aside on the last day of the ride to the mountain, had been trying to come to the oasis here. He supposed that, after abandoning his insane hammering upon the golden gate, he had retained consciousness enough to mount the dromedary and tie himself to the saddle, though he recalled nothing of it. And the loyal animal had brought him here.
“Aysa?” he asked Yarmud, eagerly. “Know you where she is?”
“No. She was chosen by Malikar to go to the mountain with the snake’s tribute. She escaped, none knew how,” the old Arab glanced at Price, with the suggestion of a wink, “and went in search of Anz, the lost city, to waken you. You know not where she is?”
Price’s heart went out to Yarmud, with the certainty that he had connived at Aysa’s escape.
“No. Malikar came, and carried her off. He left me locked in the old catacombs. I got out, and followed the tracks of his tiger. They led to the mountain.”
“We shall free her,” said Yarmud, “when we destroy the golden folk.” Noticing Price’s weakness, the old ruler soon departed, leaving him to decide one problem that had risen. These Arabs obviously considered Price the miraculous resurrection of their ancient king. As such, they were no doubt ready to follow him in a war against the golden beings.
Since he had the old king’s arms—mail, ax and shield were beside his bed—and since he knew the ax-song, it might be easy enough for him to play the part. But Price was naturally frank, straightforward. Everything in him revolted at assuming false colors.
Next morning he was feeling stronger. And he had made his decision.
WHEN Yarmud entered again, and was about to kneel, Price stopped him.
“Wait. You call me by the name of the king of lost Anz. But I am not Iru. My name is Price Durand.”
Yarmud gaped at him.
“I was born in another land,” Price explained. “I came here across the sea and the mountains.”
The Arab recovered, remonstrated excitedly:
“But you must be Iru! You are tall: you have the blue eyes, the flaming hair! Aysa went to seek you, found you. You yourself say that you broke from the tomb. You come from Anz with the ax of Iru, and whispering his ax-song.” Price began an explanation of his life, and the expedition into the desert, of how he had come to meet Aysa.
“Yes, those strangers are here,” Yarmud agreed. “They camp across the lake. They take our food, and turn their camels on our pasture, and give us no pay. They wish my warriors to march with them against the golden folk. But none of them is, like you, the image of Iru.”
In the end, Price was unable to convince Yarmud that he was not the ancient king, returned. Like Aysa, the old man cheerfully admitted his story, but insisted that he was Iru, born again. And though he was unwilling to accept any theory that he was the reincarnation of a barbarian king, Price could find no effective argument against it.
“Promise me that you will say no more that you are not Iru,” at last Yarmud demanded, shrewdly, “for my warriors are eager to follow you against the golden folk.”
And Price, for Aysa’s sake, was glad enough to promise. After all, there might be something in Yarmud’s contention. He did not intend to trouble himself further about it. The problems of one life were proving quite enough for him, without any gratuitous assumption of the burdens of another.
Aysa, Price found, was the daughter of Yarmud’s brother, who had been sheikh of the Beni Anz, until Malikar had done away with him two harvest-seasons before, for refusal to send the annual tribute to the snake. Yarmud, then, his successor, was Aysa’s uncle—which fact further increased Price’s liking for the sternly proud old ruler.
Late that afternoon Price, for the first time, left the long room in which he had wakened.
“When Aysa escaped, Malikar demanded more tribute to the snake,” Yarmud told him. “A camel laden with dates and grain, and another maiden. The snake-men have come today to take them.”
Price expressed desire to watch the departure of the sacrifice.
“You may,” Yarmud agreed. “But you should dress as one of my warriors. It would not be well for Malikar to know you are here, before we strike.”
He arrayed Price in a long, flowing gumbaz, or inner garment, a brown abba, and a vivid green kafyeh, which concealed his red hair; armed him with a long, two-edged bronze sword and a broad-bladed spear with a wooden shaft.
MINGLING with a score of men similarly dressed, Price went out into El Yerim.
He found himself upon the dusty, irregular streets of a town half concealed in groves of date-palms. The clustered mud buildings, low and squat, were of the simple, massive adobe architecture old as Babylon. The streets were deserted save for groups of Arab warriors; an air of silent dread hung over them.
Hastening northward along the brown adobe walls, they came out of the town, upon the gravel shore of a tiny lake. Its crystal water was boiling up in the center, from the uprush of the great springs that fed it—and made possible this desert garden that Quadra y Vargas had called “the golden land.”
Green-tufted palms lined the opposite shore, and under them Price saw the camp of the expedition with which he had come into the desert. The trim khaki drill tents of Jacob Garth and the other whites. The black camel’s hair hejras of the sheikh Fouad el Akmet and his Bedouins. The gray silent bulk of the army tank. Little groups of men were standing beneath the palms, watching; he recognized bulky Jacob Garth, and his enemy, Joao de Castro.
Then Price’s eyes went to what the others were watching.
Two hundred yards from where Price and the Arab warriors stood, along the broad bare strip of gravel between the adobe town and the little lake, stood a dozen white camels. Blue-robed men, armed with shimmering yellow yataghans, sat upon five of them, holding the halter-ropes of the others. One was loaded with wicker hampers; that, he supposed, was part of the tribute.
A thin, wailing shriek of agonized grief rose among the low mud houses. And the remaining six snake-men came into view, two of them dragging between them a young girl whose hands were lashed behind her. Behind followed a haggard woman, screaming and beating her flat breasts.
The girl seemed submissive, paralyzed with fear. She made no struggle as she was lifted to one of the mounted men, who laid her inert body across the saddle before him. The other men leapt upon their camels, and wheeled them, almost running down the grief-stricken woman.
Price ran forward impulsively as the eleven started around the lake, one of them leading the laden camel. Yarmud gripped his arm, stopped him.
“Wait, Iru,” he whispered. “You are not yet strong from your ride. Nor are we ready for battle. If we interfere, Malikar will come and bathe El Yerim in blood. And Vekyra—she will hunt the human game! Wait, until we are ready.”
Price stopped, realizing the wisdom of the sheikh’s words. But hot rage filled him, the burning resentment he always felt when he saw the weak abused by the strong. And cold determination filled him to destroy utterly the golden beings—be they human or living metal—that had subjected this race to such base slavery. Before, he might have been satisfied with the rescue of Aysa. Now he was filled with a stem and passionless resolve to obliterate the beings who had taken her from him.
14. The Menace in the Mirage
THE Price Durand who rode around the little lake, five days later, and into the farengi camp, with Yarmud and two-score warriors of the Beni Anz, was not the same restless wanderer who had set out with the expedition from the Arabian Sea, so many weary weeks before.
He felt completely recovered, now, from the suffering of his last cruel journey, and filled with a burning impatience to test his strength with Malikar that would brook no longer delay.
The desert sun had burned him to the brown of an Arab, had drawn every superfluous drop of moisture from his body. He was hard, lean, wiry. A new iron strength was in him, bred of the desert he had fought and mastered, a tireless endurance.
His spirit was hardened as much as his supple body. He had joined Jacob Garth, not in quest of gold, but a restless malcontent, a weary sportsman in search of a new game, a world-rover driven by vague and obscure longings, by indefinable desire for strange vistas.
In the Rub’ Al Khali he had found Aysa, strange, lovely girl, fugitive from weird peril. He had fled with her across the shifting sands . . . loved her in the hidden garden of a lost city . . . lost her to a power that he did not yet understand.
Now he was determined to find and free the girl, to blot out the beings that had taken her. It was as if the desert life had crystallized all his restless energy into a single driving power that would yield to no opposition, admit no failure.
He knew that very real and immediate danger faced the attempt. The powers of the golden beings, as he had glimpsed them, were vast and ominous, appalling. But it was not in Price to consider the consequences of defeat, save as challenge to another battle.
Jacob Garth came out of his tent, to meet Price and his bodyguard. Always an enigma, the huge man was unchanged. His puffy, tallow-white face was blandly placid, mask-like, as ever; pale, cold blue eyes still peered blankly and unfeelingly from above his tangle of curly red beard.
He stopped, and surveyed Price for a time, and then his voice rang out, richly sonorous, in casual greeting, free from hint of surprize:
“Hullo, Durand.”
“Good morning, Garth.”
Price looked down from his hejin—Yarmud’s gift—at the gross, bovinely calm man in faded, dusty khaki. He felt the cold eyes taking in his gleaming chain mail, his bright shield, the yellow ax.
“Where’ve you been, Durand?” Garth boomed suddenly.
Price met his searching, unreadable gaze. “We’ve a good deal to talk over, Garth. Suppose we adjourn somewhere out of the sun?”
“Will you come in my tent, over here under the palms?”
Price nodded. He dismounted and gave the halter-rope of his camel to one of Yarmud’s men. With a word to the old sheikh, he followed Jacob Garth to the tent, entered before him. Garth motioned to a blanket spread on the gravel floor; they squatted on it.
The big man stared at him, silently, rather grimly, then spoke suddenly:
“You understand, Durand, that you aren’t returning to your old place as leader of this expedition. I don’t know just how the men will want to dispose of you, since your—desertion.”
“That affair was revolt against my authority!” cried Price. “And against every law of human decency. I’m no deserter!” He caught himself. “But we needn’t go into that. And your men won’t be called upon to dispose of me.”
“You appear to be in cahoots with the natives,” Garth observed.
“They have accepted me as a leader. We are planning an attack on the mountain of the golden folk. I came to see if you would care to join the expedition.”
Jacob Garth seemed more interested. “They will actually follow you?” he demanded. “Against their golden gods?”
“I think so.”
“Then perhaps we can come to some agreement.” The deep voice was suave as ever, colorless. “We’ve been here for weeks. The men are rested, ready for action. We’ve been drilling. And scouting over the country.
“We’d have moved on the mountain already, but the natives refused to join me. And it appeared bad strategy to advance and leave them in control of the water. We didn’t trust them.”
“I’m sure,” Price said, “of the entire loyalty of the Beni Anz—or at least of Yarmud, the sheikh—to me. I propose that we join forces—until the golden people are smashed.”
“And then?”
“You and the men can help yourselves to the golden palace. All I want is Aysa’s safety.”
“You mean the woman you took away from de Castro?”
Price nodded.
“Well, Joao is going to have something to say about her. I promised him his choice of any women we take. But, for my part, I accept your terms.”
“We’re allies, then?”
“Until we have broken the power of the golden folk.”
Jacob Garth extended his white, puffy hand. Price took it, and was amazed again at the crushing strength beneath the smooth soft skin.
AT SUNRISE the next morning a veritable army was winding through the palm groves of El Yerim, from the camp and the town beside the tiny lake. The clattering tank led the van. Behind rode men on camels, in a close, double column.
Jacob Garth and swart, sloe-eyed Joao de Castro, at the head of the farengi, a score of hard-bitten adventurers, their pack animals laden with machine-guns, the mountain artillery, Stokes mortars, and high explosives.
The sheikh Fouad el Akmet riding before his two-score nakhawilah or renegades, who were proudly girt with glittering cartridge belts and carrying new Lebel rifles.
Price Durand, resplendent in the golden mail of Iru, riding beside Yarmud at the head of nearly five hundred eager warriors of the Beni Anz.
As the interminable line of fighting-men crept out of the green palm groves of the fertile valley, to the desolate, fire-born plateau, they came in view of Hafar Lehannum, or Verl, as the Beni Anz named the mountain—a steep-walled, basaltic butte, the core of an ancient volcano, crowned with a towered palace ablaze with myriad splintering gleams of white and gold.
An exultant cheer rolled back along the columns, as each successive group came within view of the mountain, with the bright promise of its coronal of marble and yellow metal.
Price’s heart lifted. Involuntarily he urged his hejin to a faster gait, fondled the oaken helve of Korlu, the great ax. Aysa must be a prisoner within that scintillating castle. Aysa, the fair, brave girl of the desert.
“Great is the day!” Yarmud shouted beside him, kicking his own camel to make it keep pace. “Before sunset the castle of Verl is ours. At last the golden folk shall die——”
Fear stilled his voice. Silently, pale-faced, he pointed at the bleak mountain still fifteen miles away. The whole long column had abruptly halted; a dry whisper of terror raced along it.
“The shadow of the golden folk!” came Yarmud’s fear-roughened voice.
A brilliant fan of light was lifting into the indigo sky ahead. Narrow rays of rose and topaz mingled in an inverted, splendid pyramid of flame. The apex of the pyramid touched the highest golden tower. The colored rays were up-flung from the castle.
Above the fan of saffron and rosy glory a picture appeared. Vague at first, looming gigantic as if projected on the dome of the blue heavens, it swiftly took form, color, reality.
A gigantic snake, vast as a cloud, coiled in the air above the mountain. A heap of yellow coils, the evil head uplifted upon a slender gleaming aureate column. A serpent of gold. Each brilliant scale glinted like polished metal. The head dropped upon the upmost coil, and the snake’s eyes, glittering black, insidious, looked down upon the halted, fearful columns.
