by Talbot Mundy
Private preserves? New Notions? Measure me a quart of honesty, And I will trade it for a pound weight of my thoughts. Then you and I shall go and dream together A brand-new dream of things that never happened, Nor ever can be. Come, trade with me!
What Yasmini had been doing in the minutes while King stared from theledge in the dawn was unguessable. Perhaps she had been praying toher old gods. At least she had given Ismail strict orders, for he saidnothing, but seized King's hand and led him through the dark as a ratleads a blind one--swiftly, surely, unhesitating. King had no meanswhatever of guessing their direction. They did not pass the two lightsagain with the curtain and the steps all glowing red.
They came instead to other steps, narrow and steep, that led upward in asemicircle to a rough hole in a rock wall. At the top there was a littleyellow light, so dim and small that its rays scarcely sufficed to showthe opening.
"Go up!" said Ismail, giving King a shove and disappearing at once. Oneside-step into blackness and he might have been a mile away.
So King went up, stooping to feel each next footing with a cautioushand. He was beginning to be sleepy, and to suspect that Yasmini hadtaken him to view the dawn with just that end in view. Nothing can maketired eyes so long for sleep as a glimpse of waking day--Sleepy eyes areeasiest to trick.
It was not many minutes before he was sure his guess was right.
The opening at the head of the stairs led into a tunnel. He followedit with a hand on either wall and reached another of Khinjan's strangeleather curtains. His face struck the leather unexpectedly, and at thatinstant, as if his touch were electric, the curtain sprang aside and hiseyes were dazzled by the light of diamonds.
It was Aladdin's Cave, with her acting spirit of the lamp! It neededeffort of self-control to know that the huge, white, cut crystals thatsparkled all about the hewn cell could not be diamonds. They were as bigas his head, and bigger--at least a hundred of them, and they multipliedthe light of half a dozen little oil lamps until the cave seemed thehome of light.
Yasmini had not a jewel on her. She was in a new mood and new garmentsto suit it. Her feet were still bare, but she was robed from head toheel in pure white linen, on which her long hair shone as if it weretruly strands of gold. She received him with an air of mystic calm,gracious and dignified as the high-priestess of a Grecian temple. Sheseemed devout--to have forgotten that she ever killed a man, or made athreat or plotted for a kingdom.
"Be still," she said, raising a finger. "The old gods talk to us inhere. It is not for us to answer them in words, but in deeds. Let uslisten and do!"
There were two cushions--great billowy modern ones, covered in goldbrocade--on the floor in the midst of the cave. Between them was a standof ivory, some two feet high, whose top was a disk, cut from the largesttusk that ever could have been. On the disk resting in a little hollowin the ivory, was a pure, perfect crystal sphere of a foot diameter.He could see his reflection in it, and Yasmini's, too, the moment heentered the cave, and whichever way they moved both images remainedundistorted. He suspected that the lighting and the crystal reflectorshad not been arranged at random.
In each corner of the four-square cave there was a brazier of bronze,and from each rose incense smoke, straight upward. The four streams ofsmoke met at the ceiling and converged into a cloud that hung almostmotionless.
Yasmini stepped very reverently to a cushion by the crystal in themiddle, and signed to King to imitate her. They stood facing. She seemedto pray, for her eyes were hidden under the long lashes. Then she knelt,and King did the same, his knees sinking deep into another cushion. Sothey knelt eye to eye above the crystal for many minutes without eithersaying a word. It was Yasmini who spoke first.
"The old gods have showed me the past many and many a time in this," shesaid. "It is, their way of speaking to me. Now, to-day, I have prayed tothem to show me the future. Look! Look, Athelstan! Do as I do--so!"
There seemed nothing to be gained by disobeying her. To obey her mightbe to win new insight into the ramifications of her plans. Men who haveexperience of the East are the last to deny that there is method inEastern magic; they glimpse the knowledge that belonged to Pharaoh'smen, although unlike Moses they are not always able to confound it. TheEast forgets nothing. The West ignores. But there are men from the Westwho are willing to look and to listen and to try to understand; likeKing, they go high in the Service. There are others who look on at themagic with an understanding eye and are caught by it. Their end is notgood to contemplate. The East is fettered in her own mesmeric spell andmust suffer until she wakes.
Yasmini held the upright column of the ivory stand with both hands,close under the disk at the top. He copied her, placing his hands belowhers. Hers slipped down and covered his, soft and warm; and so theystayed.
"Look!" she said. "Look!"
Her own eyes were grown big and round, and she gazed at the crystal ballas she had looked into King's eyes that night, with the very hunger ofher soul. Her lips were parted. Watching her, King grew expectant, too.His eyes followed hers, to stare into the middle of the crystal, nolonger feeling sleepy, and in less than a minute he could not havewithdrawn them had he tried.
The crystal clouded over. Yasmini's breath came steadily, with a littlehissing sound between her teeth, and the crystal, or else the wholeworld, seemed to sway in time to it. Then the man in Roman armor strodeout of a mist, and all was steady again and easy to understand. When theman in armor opened his lips to speak, one knew what he had said. Whenbe frowned, one knew why he frowned. When he smiled, one knew that shewas coming.
And she did come, dancing out of the mist behind him, to fling soft armsround his neck and whisper praises in his ear. He stood like a king whohas come into his own, with an arm round her and his chin held high. Shekissed him on his proud chin, and laughed into his face.
There were troubles--difficulties, all in the mist behind, but he stoodand despised them then while she caressed him!
Just as spoken words had no part in the vision, yet the whole wasunderstood, so time did not enter into it. There was no connecting linkbetween each scene; each dissolved into the other, and all were one.
She faded into mist, in a swirl of graceful drapery, and he frownedagain. A long line of men-at-arms stood before him, grim as he and asdiscontented. They leaned on spears, at ease, and that seemed to annoyhim most of all. A spokesman stood out from the ranks and addressed him,with gesticulations and a head so far thrown back that his helmet-plumestood out like a secretary's pen behind him. He was not a Roman,although there was something Roman about his attitude and armor. None ofthe men-at-arms was a Roman.
They demanded to be led home, wherever home was. (It was as plain as iftheir spokesman had shouted it into King's ear aloud.) And he refusedthem bluntly, proudly.
Two men brought him a native woman, each holding an arm and thrustingher forward between them. She was not at all unlike a native woman ofto-day, either in dress or sullenness; she had the beak and the keeneyes and the cruel lips of the "Hills." They showed her to him, and itwas quite clear that they compared her to their own women, left behind;the comparison was plainly to her disadvantage.
He wasted no argument on them, but his scorn made the two men fade away,and the woman with them. Yet he had no scorn for his lined-up fightingmen, and so could act none. He ordered the spokesman back to the ranks,and the man obeyed. He gave another order, and the long lines stood atattention, spears straight up and down, and their round sheilds likegreat medallions on a wall. He ordered them away, but they stood still.
Then he did a truly Roman thing. He got his harness off--unbuckled andtook off the great bronze corselet, in which he lay dead in anothercave. He threw it down--tore open the white shirt underneath--and heldhis arms out. He bade them come and kill him. He bade them drive theirspears into his unprotected breast.
There was not a movement down the line of men. They stoodas a cliff looks at the tide. He dared them. He called themcowards--women
--weaklings afraid of blood. But they stood still. Hestrode up and down the line, seeking a man with heart enough to plunge aspear into him, and no man moved.
Then he stood still before them all again and wept, because they lovedhim and he loved them. And then she came, not dancing this time, butbarefooted and walking like a poem of the early days of Greece. Shepicked up his corselet and buckled it on him, making him hold uphis arms and kneel while she slipped it over his head. And the grimmen-at-arms hove their long spears up into the air and roared her anovation, bringing down their right feet with a thunder all together.
"Ave!"
But the mist closed up and then the crystal was clear again. It wasYasmini's voice that spoke, King looked up into her eyes, and theymade him shudder, for he had never seen eyes like them. Her hands stillclasped his own, burning hot. She was more terrible than Khinjan.
"I never saw that before," she said. "It is because you are here! Weshall see it all now! We shall know it all! We shall know whether itwas she who killed him, or whether his own men took him at his word. Weshall know! Look again! Look again!"
His eyes seemed unable to obey his own will any longer. They obeyedher voice. He gazed again into the crystal, and it clouded over. Butalthough he obeyed her, the crystal obeyed him and answered at least inpart the questions his imagination asked. He was not conscious of askinganything, but being a soldier his curiosity followed a more or lessdefinite line.
Yasmini's breath began to come and go again with the little hissingsound. Her hot hands pressed his own. The mist suddenly dissolved. Therewas a road--a long white road, across a plain, and the men-at-armsfought their way along it. They were facing east.
Archers opposed them--archers on foot, and cavalry--Parthians. TheParthians were wild, but the drill of the men-at-arms was a thing tomarvel at. When the flights of arrows came they knelt behind theirshields. When the horsemen charged they closed in solid phalanx, andthe inner ranks hurled javelins at ten-yard range. When the fury of theonslaught died they formed in column and went forward, gaining furlongsat a time while their enemy watched them and wondered.
It was plain that the enemy expected them to retreat sooner or later,for the archers and cavalry were at great pains to get behind them, sothat before long the road ahead was less well defended than that behind.It did not seem to occur to the enemy that they were pressing toward thedistant line of hills and did not seek to return at all.
They had no baggage to impede them. It was absurd to suppose they wouldnot try to fight a way back soon. They must be a Roman raiding party,out to teach Parthians a lesson. Yet they pressed ever forward, and thehills grew ever nearer; while he sat a great brown charger calmly intheir midst and gave them not too many orders, but here and there a wordof praise, and once or twice a trumpet shout of encouragement. He seemedto own the knack of being wherever the fight was fiercest. His merepresence seemed better than a hundred men when the phalanx bent beforecharging cavalry.
She rode a little white horse, beside him always and utterly scornfulof the risk. She wore no armor--carried no shield. Her bare feet showedthrough the sandal straps, and the outlines of her lissom body werequite visible through the muslin stuff she wore. She might have justcome from the dancing. She had a flower in her hand, and a wreath offlowers in her hair. She shouted more encouragement than he. She shoutedtoo much. Once he laid a strong brown hand across her mouth, and sheheld it there and kissed it.
They lost men--five or six or ten or twenty at each onslaught. Perhapsthey had been a thousand strong in the beginning. Their own men--theregimental surgeons probably--cut the throats of the badly wounded, tosave them from the enemy's attentions; and by this time they were notmore than seven or eight hundred strong.
But they went forward--ever forward--and the line of hills drew near.Then he began to stir himself, and she with him. He shouted to them tocharge, and she echoed him, leaving his side at last to take commandof a wing and sting the tired-out men-at-arms into new enthusiasm. Ina minute they were a roaring tide that swept forward to the foot of thehills and surged upward without a check. In a little while they werehurling boulders down on an enemy that seemed inclined to parley.
Then, like a shadow of the incense cloud above, the mist closed up inthe crystal again, and in a moment more King and Yasmini were lookinginto each other's eyes again above it.
"I have seen that before," she said, shaking her, head. "I am weary oftheir battles. They won that is enough! I must know how they failed, sothat we make no such mistakes!"
Her face was flushed, and her eyes glowed with the fire that is not litby ordinary passion. She was being eaten by ambition--burned by her ownfire--by ambition not totally selfish, for she yearned to shepherd Kingas she seemed to think this woman of the vision had not shepherded theman in armor.
"Look again!" she said. "Look again! And oh, ye old gods, show--show mewherein she failed!"
They stared again, and once more the crystal clouded. Out of the cloudcame a city in the middle of a plain, and the city was besieged. It wasnot a very great city, but from the outside it looked rich, for domesand roofs and towers showed above the wall, all well built and wellpreserved. He and she, sitting their horses out of arrow range from themain gate seemed confident of taking it and eager to get it over with.
They no longer had only six or seven hundred men, but men by thethousand. Their veterans in Roman armor were in command of others now,and they had a human pack-train with them, heavily burdened captives whosulked in chains under a guard.
The mist cleared further, and the gate gave in under the blows of animprovised battering-ram, covered by showers of arrows from shortrange. Then, like a river breaking down a dam, the thousands stormed in,howling. Smoke rose. There were screams of women. A great tower near thegate, that was half wood, half stone, crackled and curled up in yellowand crimson flame. He and she rode in together as modern men and womenride through a gate to the covert side at a fox-hunt. They chatted andlaughed together, and their horses pranced, responding to the humor oftheir riders.
King would have liked to tear his eyes away from the scenes thatfollowed in the tree-lined streets, but the crystal ball held him asif in a trance--that and Yasmini's hands that clasped his own like hottorture chamber clamps. Animals fighting to the death are not so vile,nor so inhuman as men can be in the hour of what they call victory. Eventhe little children of that city paid the penalty for having closed thegate.
Time was no measure to the crystal ball. In minutes it showed thedevil's work of hours. The city went up in smoke and flame, and fromthe far side through a great breach in the wall the conquerors wentout, with their plunder and such prisoners as had been saved to drag andcarry it.
Now there were wagons and camels and horses. Now there were tents andfurniture. Now each man of the fighting force had as much as he himselfcould carry, as well as what was loaded on the prisoners.
Only he and she seemed to care nothing for the loot and rode as if eachwas all the other needed. Still he wore nothing but his armor, andshe no more than her dancing dress and sandals. But now she had eightprisoners to hold a panoply above her horse and keep the sun from her.
She had flowers woven in her hair, and others in her hand, as if sherode from a bridal feast and were not in mourning for a plundered,butchered city. They were headed northward now, toward distantmountains, and the dust of their long column went up like a river ofsmoke, flowing from the holocaust behind.
Yasmini shook her head impatiently. The crystal clouded over, and King'seyes were free.
"I am tired of it," she said. "I have seen that so many times. I knowthey won. I know they found their way to Khinjan. I know they began tobuild an empire here. I have seen all that a hundred times. What I mustknow is what mistake they made. What did they do wrong? How did theycome to fail? Look again! Let us look again!"
She never once let King's hands go, but pressed them tighter andtighter until the circulation nearly stopped and they grew numb. Her ownstrength seemed endless--t
o grow rather than to wane in proportion asher yearning to look into the past grew. Her attitude would havebeen more understandable if she had believed herself and King to bereincarnations of those forgotten conquerors; but she was too originalfor that. She had said the old gods wished, and the man and the womanwere; the old gods wished the same wish again, and she and King were.Why then, if the old gods were contriving it all, should she seek tosteady the ark for them? But down at bottom there is no logic connectedwith gods many. She clutched King's fingers as if to hold him there, andto make him see and understand the distant past, were the only way tosave him from mistakes.
"Look!" she insisted. "Look again!" And he obeyed her. By this timeobedience was much the easiest course. Between times his eyes were soweary he could hardly hold them open, and it was only when he gazed intothe crystal that he could rest them and feel easy. He knew well thatshe was winning control over him in some sort, and he fought against itgrimly. Soon he became weirdly conscious of being two men--one, whom shehad grasped and overcome, a physical man who did not matter much, andanother, mental man who was free from her, who could understand her,whom she could not reach or touch.
"Look!" she insisted. "Look!" And the crystal clouded over.
He strode out of the mist again, frowning, with his chin hung low andfists clenched tight at his sides. Four of his own men came out of themist to him and greeted him respectfully, yet not without a touch ofirony.
They spoke to him and pointed westward. One laid a hand on his shoulder,but he shook it off and the man reeled back as if he had been struck.Another man took up the argument, but he shook his head. They all spoketogether, gesticulating and growing angry; but he stood calm among them,as a rock stands in a storm. He folded his arms across his breast aftera while and listened, saying nothing.
Then as if to end the argument for good and all, he drew his sword andheld it out toward them, hilt first, telling them again to kill himand have done with it. They refused. He laughed at them, but they stillrefused; so he put his sword back in the sheath.
One of the men stepped into the mist and disappeared. Presently hecame again, with two others, helping a wounded man along between them.Whoever the wounded man might be he was treated with respect. Prouderthan Lucifer, he who had struck another man's hand from off his shoulderknelt to give this wounded man a knee and seemed pained when the manrefused him.
The wounded man pointed to the westward too and argued in shortclipped-off sentences. He had a day or two to live--certainly notlonger, for the blood flowed slowly from a wound that would not stanch;yet he argued as a man who has lost no interest in life, but rather seesits problems truly now that his own are near an end.
He demanded something almost truculently. He took his helmet off andpassed it down to him. With fingers that were growing feeble the woundedman held it and traced out the letters S. P. Q. R. on the front.
"Go home!" he said, passing it back to him. "Fight your way back home!"What he said was as distinct as if a voice in the cave had spoken it.
Then, vision within a vision--dream within a dream--there was a view ofthe Via Appia, with gaunt grim gallows set along it in a row and on thema regiment's commander crucified along with the remnant of his men.
"So Rome treats traitors!" said a voice, that might have been eitherman's.
But instantly there was another vision, of ten thousand wolves bayingdown a Himalayan gorge in winter-time, the sleet frozen stiff on theirfur and their tongues hanging. Eye and fang flashed altogether and madeone gleam.
"Choose!" said a voice.
So he chose. He nodded. The men saluted him, and the wounded man washelped away to die. And then she came, angry as a flash of lightning, tospring at him and cling to him and call him names--begging, demanding,ordering, crying--abusing him and praising him in turn. He shook hishead. She sobbed, but he shook his head again and pointed westward.Then she took him by the hand and led him away, not looking at his faceagain.
The crystal ball grew clouded. Yasmini's breath came and went as if shewere running in a race, and her pressure on King's fingers was actuallypainful. The mist dissolved, and King forgot the pressure--forgoteverything. The man in armor lay dead on his back in the cave on thewooden bed, and she bent over him, dagger in hand.
"Ah!" said Yasmini, her teeth chattering. "But what else could she do?"The mist closed in again and the crystal grew opaque. "The future!" shebegged. "It is the future I must know! Ye old gods, tell me! Show me!"
The mist turned red. The crystal ball became as it were a ball of firerevolving within itself. The fire turned to blood, and the blood tofire again. The very cavern that they knelt in seemed to sway. Yasminiscreamed and moaned. She loosed King's hands to cover her own eyes.
And as she did that King sank, like a sack half-empty and toppled oversidewise on the floor asleep.
He neither dreamed nor was conscious of anything, but slept like a deadman, having fought against her mesmerism harder than he knew.
Statesmen, generals, outlaws, all make their big mistakes and manage torecover. Very nearly always it is an apparently little mistake that doesmost damage in the end, something unnoticeable at the time, that growsin geometrical proportion, minus instead of plus.
Yasmini made her little mistake that minute in believing King wasutterly mesmerized at last and utterly in her power. Whereas in truth hewas only weary. It may be that she gave him orders in his sleep, afterthe accepted manner of mesmerists; but if she did, they never reachedhim; he was far too fast asleep. He slept so deep and long that he wasnot conscious of men's voices, nor of being carried, nor of time, nor ofanxiety, nor of anything.
Chapter XVI