Collected Short Fiction, page 153
Malikar leaned forward, chuckling throatily, evilly. He picked up the heavy black whip on the desk, ran the thin lash of it through his yellow fingers, gloatingly, suggestively.
Red rage flared up in Price at thought of lovely Aysa, locked in a golden body from which she could not escape, the slave and plaything of this leering yellow demon.
He glared at Malikar, speechless with anger, longing savagely to sink his fingers into the yellow priest’s thick neck.
Suddenly the golden man bent, opened a drawer of the desk, and produced a delicate brush and a small bottle of what appeared to be liquid, flowing gold. Setting brush and vial on the desk, he looked up at Price with flat, inscrutable, yellowish eyes.
“Mr. Durand,” he said suavely, “I am going to offer you an unusual opportunity. I can make use of your services in exterminating the foolish gold-seekers that came with you in here.”
“Will you free Aysa——” Price began eagerly.
“No,” Malikar grated shortly. “But I give you one chance to save your pitiful life.”
“And that is——”
“Here is your choice: Swear allegiance to the snake, and to me, priest of the snake. I will paint the symbol of the snake upon your forehead, spare your life to the service of the snake.”
“I’ll do nothing of the kind——”
“This is your choice,” repeated Malikar, with grim irony. “Become slave of the snake, and live. Or you shall be the slave of this snake”—he lifted the black coils of the whip—“and die in the dungeon!”
The gloating, jeering cruelty of the hard, flat voice snapped Price’s control of himself. Red anger swept him. Naked as he was, he turned upon the snake-man beside him, snatched the golden-bladed pike from his dumfounded grasp, and leapt savagely toward the red-robed man behind the desk.
Two guards seized him before he had moved three steps.
Malikar sprang from behind the big desk, chuckling unpleasantly and drawing the whip’s thin lash through his fingers.
“Loose the dog,” he snapped at the guards, in Arabic.
They released Price, leapt back to the walls.
Again he darted forward, the pike uplifted.
The thin black length of the whip reached out, writhing like a living tentacle. It did not touch Price; it wrapped around the wooden haft of the pike.
The weapon was snatched from Price’s hand, flung across the floor. Still he ran forward, fists clenching, driven by blind, mad rage at this suave, taunting golden demon.
Again the whip leapt out, with a sharp report. In his red anger Price was unconscious of the pain. But the skin on his chest was slashed open as if with a knife.
Still he ran on, fists doubled to drive into Malikar’s body.
As if endowed with malignant life, the whip reached out again, coiled around his ankles. Tripped by it, he stumbled, fell heavily.
As he staggered to his feet, the lash drew a cold line of pain across his naked back. Again he stumbled forward.
The long lash went round and round his body, pinioning his arms. Malikar jerked it, sent him spinning once more to the floor.
As Price dragged himself to his feet, he saw that the golden tiger had entered the long hall behind him. In its blade howdah sat Vekyra, the yellow woman, watching him with slanted, tawny-green eyes—detached, impersonal, pitiless.
Again the lash fell across his shoulders, like a slashing blade. Price heard Malikar chuckle thickly, in evil, sadistic pleasure. He turned and ran reeling back at the priest, grasping with vain hands at the living, torturing whip.
The astonishing adventures of Price in the hall of illusion will be fasdnatinsrlv told in next month’s Weird Tales, on sale August 1.
Golden Blood
A novel of weird adventures in the hidden land of Arabia, and a golden folk that ride upon a golden-yellow tiger and worship a golden snake
The Story Thus Far
DYNAMITING their schooner behind them on the south coast of Arabia, a little band of desperate adventurers plunged into the hostile mystery of the Rub’ Al Khali, cruelest and least-known desert of the earth. Their leaders were Price Durand, wealthy American soldier of fortune, Jacob Garth, enigmatic Englishman, and Joao de Castro, unsavory Macanese.
Equipped with an army tank, machine-guns, and mountain artillery, and accompanied by the sheikh Fouad el Akmet and his renegade Bedouins, they raided the forbidden golden land,” which was guarded by the uncanny scientific powers of its weird rulers, the “golden folk”—a man, an exotic woman, a huge, domesticated tiger, and a gigantic snake, all four of which had been transformed, by yellow vapors rising from a volcanic fissure in a mountain where they dwelt, into eternal yellow metal, immortally alive.
Price fell in love with Aysa, a strange, lovely fugitive, and fought de Castro for her. She was abducted by Malikar, the golden man, and Price, venturing after her into the mountain, found her sleeping in the yellow mist, being herself turned into gold by Malikar, who intends to make her his unwilling consort.
Overcome by the soporific influence of the vapor, Price was captured and imprisoned by Malikar. Stark naked, he has just been dragged into the presence of the golden man, who, amazingly, is surrounded by conveniences of Western civilization. Mockingly asked to join the sinister cult of the golden snake, Price refused. In mad, hopeless fury, he has attacked Malikar without arms, ignoring the golden man’s torturing whip.
The story continues:
22. Vekyra’s Guest
PRICE’S savage rage against his torturer was drowned in the blood that ran thickly down his naked body from the slashes of the whip. He realized suddenly that he was merely giving Malikar the pleasure of killing him, uselessly.
He checked his last charge at the golden man, stood motionless in the long hall, beneath the shaded electric lights that were so weirdly incongruous among the baffling wonders of this forgotten land.
Again the whip touched him, drew blood like a flashing blade; involuntarily he flinched. But he folded his arms and stood staring at Malikar.
“Enough, Mr. Durand?” the golden man mocked him.
Price bit his lip, said nothing.
Malikar gestured to the snake-men who had brought him into the room. They closed upon him—to take him back to the dank horror of the dungeon, he knew. And he knew he was not likely to leave it again, living.
Price turned, and saw the tiger again. Colossal golden cat, elephantine in bulk, it stood in the middle of the hall. The yellow woman, Vekyra, was leaning over the side of its black howdah, watching Price with odd speculation in her greenish eyes.
Desperate, illogical hope came to him abruptly. He knew that the woman and Malikar were at loggerheads. He had seen their duel for the control of the golden serpent. Vekyra, he suspected, was not delighted by Malikar’s passion for Aysa.
Running suddenly ahead of his guards, toward the tiger, he cried:
“Vekyra, won’t you help me? Can you see me buried alive?”
It was a hopeless prayer. She had watched while Malikar plied the whip. And he had seen no pity on her oval face.
Side from the pain of his bleeding wounds, dizzy, reeling, Price was clutching at the last, futile straw of hope.
“Oh, Vekyra, you will help me! One so beautiful——”
At the last she smiled, brightly, enigmatically. Her greenish eyes showed interest, but no pity for him.
Price’s guards hesitated behind him, keeping a respectful distance from the yellow tiger. Malikar roared after them: “Take the dog on to his dungeon!”
That harsh command had the effect upon Vekyra that Price had tried for in vain. The oblique eyes flashed maliciously green. She smiled down again.
“Stranger, you are my guest,” her silvery voice spoke. “Mount with me.”
She darted a venomous glance at Malikar.
“The man is mine,” snarled the golden priest. “If I command that he rots in the dungeon, there he rots.”
“Not,” Vekyra insisted with a poisoned smile, “if I take him to my palace.”
“Forward!” bellowed Malikar. “Seize the man.”
Timidly the blue-robes advanced.
“Touch him,” Vekyra assured them sweetly, “and the tiger dines well this night.”
They paused, looking fearfully back at Malikar.
The golden priest strode down across the hall, the long whip, red with Price’s blood, writhing and hissing before him like a living serpent. The snake-men scattered toward the walls.
Vekyra laughed, and her laughter was chiming, silvery, mocking.
“Perhaps your whip can master the snake, O Priest,” she called, “but not Zor, I think. The tiger has been mine too long.”
Malikar hesitated visibly; but he came on toward Price, the whip twisting and cracking angrily before him.
Hardly able to stand, Price staggered toward the tiger. His raw wounds throbbed intolerably. Nausea and weakness almost overwhelmed him, the result of long days of hardship as much as of his present pain and loss of blood. The floor of the long hall swam and rocked, the high electric lights floated in fiery circles.
Yekyra leaned forward in the howdah. She whispered to the tiger; one great ear slanted back to listen.
Then the colossal golden beast advanced upon Malikar, crouching, hind legs drawn forward. It growled menacingly. The sound was a sullen roar, filling the great hall with throbbing fury.
Malikar stopped; the hissing lash dropped to the floor.
“Woman!” his voice grated, hard with hate, “you will pay for this. You think I will not whip you because you are of the golden blood?”
I know you will not whip me—because you can not!”
“Know now that you are no longer priestess of the snake—nor can ever be again. Another has been chosen.”
That other, Price knew, was Aysa.
“Of that I had learned already,” the woman responded, cold wrath in her silver tones. “But perhaps I have found another to be priest of the snake and master of the golden folk. Was not Iru once as great as Malikar?”
She gestured toward Price with a slim golden arm.
“That whelp is not Iru,” snarled the priest. “He is but a lying pretender, who rifled the king’s tomb.”
“And was Malikar not once a lying pretender?” the silver voice inquired acidly. And it took a note of warning: “Guard well your new priestess, Malikar, lest she fall into the pit, or perchance feed the snake, instead of worshipping it.”
Again Vekyra leaned forward, calling something into the tiger’s ear. The gigantic yellow beast crouched until its tawny belly touched the floor. With lithe grace the woman leapt from the howdah.
Running to Price’s side, she slipped off the loose green cloak above her close-fitting tunic, wrapped it about his bleeding shoulders.
Come!” she whispered urgently his ear. “Mount, before yon slave-driver devises more evil!”
REELING uncertainly, Price turned with her toward the crouching tiger. A slim, bare yellow arm slipped about his smarting shoulders. Vekyra, amazingly strong, lifted him into the great howdah, where he fell back gratefully among the cushions.
Malikar ran back to his desk, hammered a great bronze gong behind it, whose screaming reverberations filled the hall with insistent clamor of alarm. Vaguely, his head spinning with pain and exhaustion, Price was aware of shouting and the clangor of arms along distant passages.
Vekyra, leaping easily into the howdah beside him, called again into the tiger’s ear. The great beast surged to its feet with irresistible strength, with one smooth effort, far unlike the awkward lurching of a rising camel.
Vekyra shouted again, and the animal wheeled and ran from the room, the howdah swaying upon its back like a boat grasped in a mighty current.
Behind, Malikar bellowed ominously, “Woman, you shall taste my whip for this. And the dog upon which you defile your hands shall——”
Then they were outside in a dark passage, illuminated only by occasional flaring cressets—the electric lights appeared to have been restricted to the one room. It was eight feet wide, nearly twice that high; but there was none too much room for the racing tiger.
“We must hasten,” Vekyra whispered, her voice edged with alarm, “or Malikar will have the gates closed, and shut us out of my palace.”
A great, yellow-fringed ear was cupped back to listen, as Vekyra called another command. The tiger surged forward more swiftly, until Price’s sensations were those of sheer flying. Around a sharp corner it flung, plunged swaying up a sloping way.
Ahead, Price saw an incandescent rectangle of sky, almost blindingly blue to eyes sensitized by the surrounding gloom.
Vekyra reached down among the cushions beside her, found a short, oddly shaped metal bow. Snatching an arrow from a full quiver fastened in the corner of the howdah, she knocked it, sat waiting alertly.
Dark hastening figures were suddenly visible in the bright, enlarging rectangle ahead. Then it was narrowing. Shrill squealing of pulleys reached Price’s ears. Great valves of yellow metal, he saw, were swiftly closing.
Vekyra drew her arrow to the head. Price heard the singing twang of the bow, and ahead, a sharp cry. The screech of pulleys ceased.
The tiger slipped through the space between the half-closed gates, so narrow that the howdah’s fastenings scraped.
And they burst into sunlight so bright that Price, for a time, could see nothing.
Weak and dizzy, he sank back among the cushions, drawing an arm across his eyes. Then he felt Vekyra’s smooth arms slipped beneath his shoulders.
“Be ye welcome,” she whispered, “to my castle of Verl. Rest, and fear nothing, for you are Vekyra’s guest.”
She lifted him up, and her whisper became soft, seductively caressing, as she added, extravagantly: “I am your slave.”
23. The Golden Folk
FOR a few minutes Price lay completely relaxed, supported by Vekyra’s arm, as the tiger swayed forward. Hot, blinding sunlight drenched him, strangely grateful to one unexpectedly delivered from the black dungeons of Malikar. Its penetrating force was mildly stimulating. Presently he moved to sit up, stirred by curiosity about this amazing, mountain-crowning palace.
Gorgeous wonders of Oriental gardens burst upon him. The tiger was pacing across a wide court, surrounded with walls and colonnades of refulgent gold and gleaming white marble. Dark, lush grass edged crystal pools, where white doves splashed joyously. Graceful palms flung high their emerald, tufted masses. Bright-flowering shrubs tinctured the air with cool fragrance.
About the broad court rose the gold-and-alabaster towers of Verl. Lacy balconies above vivid gardens, supported by slender, twisted columns. High, trefoil-arched windows, peering domes and slim minarets. The architecture was typically Arabic; but all was snowy marble, shining gold.
In the white dazzle of the afternoon sun the splendors of the place would have been painful, but for the coo! green shadows of the gardens.
Deliberately the golden tiger carried the swaying howdah along a gravel path, beneath an arcade of palms. Price stared about him in silent wonder. The scene was so like his dreams of many cruel days that he felt suddenly that it must be illusion, madness, mirage.
Had his old delirium returned?
Summoning a desperate strength, he turned fiercely to the woman beside him in the howath, seized a bare, golden arm, peered into her face. Her skin gleamed like pale gold; it felt somehow metallic. But it was warm and yielding beneath his fingers; he felt under it firm, vibrant muscles.
“Woman of gold,” he demanded, “are you real?”
The face was strange. Oval. Exotically lovely. The color of pale gold, framed in hair of ruddy gold. The slightly slanted eyes were greenish, like the tiger’s. Behind heavy golden lashes, they were enigmatic, inscrutable.
“More real than you are, Iru. For I am gold, and you are frail flesh. For I was as I am now, when Anz was living, and her people teeming millions. And I shall be as I now am when your bones are as the bones of Anz.”
She smiled, and he read a baffling challenge in her eyes.
“Maybe so, old girl,” Price muttered in English. “But I call your bluff, and I’ll play the game.”
His fighting will could keep back oblivion no longer. A sea of night flowed over him, and he sank back in Vekyra’s arms.
PRICE awoke within the most magnificent—if perhaps not the most comfortable—room that he had ever occupied, huge and lofty, the broad doorway arched and silken-curtained. The marble floor was thick-strewn with rugs, deep-piled, dull-red and blue. High walls were milky alabaster, paneled with gold.
From his elaborate, canopied bed he could look through wide, unglazed windows, over the basalt walls of Verl, to the dark lava plateau half a mile below, which stretched away beyond the green mark that was the oasis of El Yerim, to tawny wastes of flat red desert beyond, to shimmering horizons smoky in hot distance.
Price was surprized by his sense of well-being, and by the fact that his whip-cuts were completely healed. Such recovery could not have taken place in one day. He guessed, and Vekyra later admitted, that he had lain for some days in oblivion induced by her healing drugs. For she, it seems, was something of a chemist and physician.
Somewhat to Price’s confusion, he found six personal attendants waiting in the vast room on the day he woke. They were young women, tall, rather attractive, with the dark hair, thin lips, and aquiline noses that bespoke Arabic blood. They wore short, dark-green tunics, and each carried at her waist a long, crooked-bladed, golden jambiyah. On the forehead of each was the yellow brand of the snake.
They brought him white silken robes (his own garments were still in Malikar’s possession), offered him food, water and wine. He tried a little to talk to them; but though they seemed pathetically eager to serve him, they avoided his questions.
Still feeling languid, without energy, he made no effort to leave the great room until late afternoon, when Vekyra came to call upon him. Her slim, pale-golden figure was cased in dark forest-green, her red-gold hair fell in a flaming cascade. The slant of her dark-lidded eyes gave a hint of mystery to her oval face.
