Vekyra 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 in 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 nocked 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 cool 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 howdah, 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 surprised 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 som
e 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.
Price rose to greet her. She saluted him as Iru, inquired about his health, and seated herself upon a cushioned sofa. The girls—Price was not yet certain whether they were servants or jailers—retired discreetly.
“One thing I must tell you,” Price began, rather abruptly, anxious not to sail under false colors. “You called me Iru. I’m not. My name is Price Durand. I was born on the other side of the world.”
Deliberately, the greenish, oblique eyes studied his face, his lean, muscular limbs. Price, still feeling the lassitude of convalescence, sat down opposite the golden woman.
“You are Iru, king of Anz,” Vekyra said calmly, at length. “For I knew the ancient Iru well—who better? You are he. It makes no difference that you have been born again, and in a far land.”
“You knew him, then?” Price asked, conversationally. He felt a keen interest in the old ruler for whom he had been several times mistaken. And he was determined not to show any awe of Vekyra.
“You have forgotten me? Then I shall tell you the story of the ancient Iru, for it is only the beginning of the same story that we are living now—you and I, and Malikar and Aysa.”
At the girl’s name, Price started visibly.
Vekyra smiled obliquely, murmured: “Ah, I see you remember her.”
“I know a girl of that name,” admitted Price.
He tried to make his tone impersonal, but the woman must have caught some hint of his feeling, for her oval face went suddenly hard with hate.
“Aysa, like you, is born again!” she hissed. “Again we are all four together, to finish the story that started when Anz was young.”
The passion went from her golden face as quickly as it had come, and she settled her lithe, gleaming body among the cushions, and flung back the rich, glinting masses of her hair.
“When I was a girl—and not yet my blood golden—Iru was king of Anz. The people loved him, because he was handsome and strong, famous for his courage and his skill with his golden ax. And you are he!”
Price shook his head.
“You have his lean, tall figure, his blue eyes, his red hair—and those are rare indeed among our people. More, I know your face!
“Anz was great then, her people millions. The creeping drift-sands were yet far off. The rains came every winter; the lakes and reservoirs were always full, the crops and pastures plenty.
“Then there were no golden beings save the snake. The snake has lived in the mountain since before the dawn of man. It sometimes came out, through a cave, to hunt. The people of Anz thought it a god—for the strange fascination of its eyes—and built a temple to it below the mountain.
“In the time of Iru, Malikar was priest of the snake. A bold man he was, and a seeker of wisdom. As many priests do, he knew the truth about his god. He went back into the cave, and found the abyss of golden vapor, which rises from the fires of inner earth, turning all things that breathe it into deathless gold.
“The snake was but a common reptile that had made its lair within the mountain, and breathed the mist. No more god than any snake. Malikar made tests, and found the secret of the golden blood.
“Now you—or Iru—were a warrior and a hunter. You knew not the secret of the snake, but you held that it was an evil thing. You decreed that the toil and the lives of the Beni Anz should be paid it in sacrifice no longer. You ordered the priests to leave their temple. For this Malikar hated you, and resolved to destroy you, to make his god supreme and rule as both priest and king.
“Yet another quarrel had you and the priest. I, Vekyra, as I said, was then a young woman, a princess of Anz, and not golden, as you see me now. You loved me. You said, then, that I was beautiful. We were betrothed to marry. And Malikar desired me also.
“Iru led his soldiers to the temple. The priests fled before his golden ax. He destroyed the temple and sealed the snake’s cavern.
“Malikar fled when he saw the battle was lost, left the other priests. By a secret way he went into the mountain, and far down into the golden mist. There he slept for many days, until the golden vapor had penetrated his body, changed its tissues to strong and deathless gold.
“Now the girl Aysa was a slave. I bought her from traders of the north, for a tiring-maid. One day Iru saw her, and wanted her. Now since we were to marry, I was not pleased. I told him he might have the girl—if he would exchange for her a tamed tiger.
“While Malikar lay sleeping in the golden mist, Iru rode into the mountains and fought a tigress and brought back its cub. He tamed it and brought it to me, so I was forced to give him the slave, Aysa. But better for him had he kept his beast!”
Green, slanted eyes flamed.
“Malikar lay in the mountain until he was a man of gold. Then he led out the snake, and went among the desert clans that dwelt beyond Anz, to preach his new religion. He said he had died, and been born again—delivered of the snake, with a body of gold.
“The desert folk believed him. For was his body not golden, and so strong he let them hew it with swords? Malikar led them against Anz, the snake with him, to freeze men with the chill of its eyes.
“But you were a great warrior. You gathered the cattle and the tillers of fields inside the walls. Then you went out, with your warriors and Korlu, your ax, and scattered the desert men back into the waste.
“But Malikar and the snake you could not slay, for they were gold. You could only return to Anz, and close the gates against them.
“Then Malikar resolved to use cunning. He sent the snake back into the mountain. Painting his golden body, to make it the color of a man’s—as he yet does, when he goes out into the world—he slipped back into Anz, to murder you.
“But you were surrounded by your warriors, and the great ax was always with you. Malikar could not approach you secretly.
“Then he found a new plan. He went to Aysa, the slave. How he won her, I do not know. Perhaps with the promise of gold, which was plenty in the cave of the snake. Perhaps with fear of the snake-god. Or it may be that his kisses were enough.
“Aysa put his poison in your bowl, and you drank it with your wine. You died. But the slave gained little by her treason. Iru tasted the poison, and knew what she had done, and slew her with the ax before he fell.
“Then Malikar stood forth as the man of gold and the avenger of the snake. Leaderless, the Beni Anz bowed down before him. They sent an offering of many slaves to the snake, and Malikar ruled them, priest and king.
“With the many slaves, Malikar hewed a new temple in the heart of the mountain, down in the very mist of gold.
“When Iru was dead, Malikar took me by force into the mountain, and left me sleeping in the yellow vapor until I was gold. He would have made me his slave for ever. But the tame tiger cub, that Iru had caught for the slave-girl’s sake, followed me into the mountain.
“There the sleep fell upon it, and it also woke an animal of gold. Malikar could not kill it, and it still loved me, and served me. And year by year it grew larger—perh
aps because it was not grown when it slept—until even the snake fears it.
“That is the story of the golden folk.”
Price sat in silent wonder. He did not believe in reincarnation; but neither did he disbelieve. He knew that hundreds of millions hold it as the basis of their religion.
Vekyra’s story was interesting. It had a strange plausibility. It seemed to explain much at which he had wondered. He was willing to admit it as possibly true—all of it save that Aysa was the avatar of a murderess.
Vekyra glided up from her couch, and across the rugs to Price. She leaned on the arm of his chair, her perfumed tresses falling like a torrent of ruddy flame across his shoulders, her slim, green-clad body nearly touching him.
“That is the story, Iru. And a hundred generations I have lived in this palace of Verl that Malikar built for me, enduring a life without love that had no mercy of death—waiting for you, my Iru!
“Many times I have longed to leap into the golden abyss. But I knew that some time you would be born again, my Iru, and come back to me—even though new lands rose from the sea, and new deserts barred your way.”
The golden woman slipped down beside Price, her warm body vibrant against his own. Her slim yellow arms went around him, soft and yet strong. She lifted her enigmatic, oval face, greenish eyes burning, reddened lips parted in avid invitation.
A moment he hesitated, almost shrinking from her. Then the burning promise of her swept him away. He inclined toward her, flung his arm around her slender body. Her hot lips came up to his, clinging, hungry—and their touch plunged him into white, delicious flame.
24. MIRRORS OF MIRAGE
WHEN Vekyra was gone, Price felt disturbed and a little guilty thinking of Aysa. But the golden woman had certainly saved his life, he reflected. A few kisses were not too much to pay.
He might have found other excuses for his moment of surrender to the golden beauty. Her good offices appeared the only possible means of Aysa’s rescue—and a very doubtful means, Vekyra hating the unfortunate girl as she evidently did. Vekyra’s displeasure would mean a speedy and probably permanent return to the dungeons of Malikar. But, honest with himself, Price admitted that no such consideration had occurred to him during that flaming moment in Vekyra’s arms.
Golden Blood Page 14