The 11th Golden Age of Weird Fiction

by E. Hoffmann Price

  He stumbled on, breath coming in painful gasps. His head was splitting. As he wove and stumbled down the ravine, he was thinking, “Something knocked me silly. That Laylat—Lilith’s daughter—God, what a nightmare—”

  Then he saw the horse. It was Saoud’s mount. Painfully, he pulled himself into the saddle. He could not make much better time than on foot, but riding would save his strength. For a moment, he was not sure whether he should ride on: better to go back and find the Black Book, and tell Khosru Khan what had happened. But he ended by discarding that idea; the first thing to do was to get those fools on the road. Once they saw him they would believe, they would realize their danger, they would know that not even his friendship with the khan could save them from the penalty for entering the forbidden shrine. They were not worth it, but his obligation drove him; they were under his protection.

  He rode on. The moon was setting, but Saoud’s horse knew the way to camp. The false dawn lightened the gloom for a little while, and then came blackness like that of the pit where he had faced a force which he now attributed to senses torn awry by the shock of bullets and the fall against jagged rock.

  Finally he could distinguish the camp. There was a light still burning in his tent. He slid from the saddle, reeled dizzily. A wave of wrath shook him. He stood there, looking at the shadows cast on the canvas. Diane and Howarth were wasting no time. They were not in the least concerned about his possible return.

  That was what whipped his fury, and restored his flagging strength. He strode toward the tent, and jerked the fly aside. They were too engrossed to hear him.

  Diane was stretched out in a collapsible lounging chair. Her sea-green robe trailed away from her body, and the light reached through the frail gown which clung to bosom and leg.

  “Darling,” she said to Howarth, “maybe we should leave, regardless. Even though those fools couldn’t find the book, even though Khosru’s people do find it, and him, they may blame us.”

  Howarth looked at his watch. “My God, I didn’t know it was so late!”

  He turned toward the door. Diane exclaimed, “How did that get opened?” Neither saw Mason. The shock of full understanding had made him recoil, so that the light from the doorway no longer reached him. He knew now that they had not expected him back; that Howarth, humiliated by that beating, had sent some of the Arabs to intercept him, to recover the Black Book. They must have come back, saying that they had found him and Saoud, but not the sacred volume. “Maybe,” Mason told himself, “they don’t realize the Arabs shot us.” But he could not convince himself. They were too pleased with everything; they had sent men to kill him, get the Black Book.

  And then he felt the earth shake, and heard the drumming of hoofs. Spurts of flame lashed the darkness. There were yells, screams from the Arab camp. Brett came bounding from his tent. Diane shrieked, leaped to her feet. Bearded men with high-peaked turbans closed in on all sides. Howarth, running to get his pistol, spun and doubled up; a curved blade slashed, and Brett fell.

  Then Khosru Khan caught Diane by the shoulder, tearing her robe from her, ripping her gown to the waist. “O daughter of murder!” he roared, “whether he lives or dies, he will not save your skin!”

  During all this whirlpool of fury, Mason had said not a word, had not made a move; things were happening too rapidly, and his senses were spinning. As he stared, new horror thrusting aside the old, the entire scene blurred. The sounds came as from a great distance, and blackness gulped him up.

  * * * *

  When he could again perceive what was about him, the sun was shining. He was stretched out on a scarlet Kurdish rug in Khosru Khan’s reception room. It was cool in that thick-walled fortress, and the sounds of the town were well shut out. His first thought was that he was a captive, the only survivor of the massacre; then he realized that he was not shackled, and that there were no guards about him.

  He made an effort, a painful effort, and sat up. A girl was kneeling beside him, and at his first move, she set embroidered cushions to support him.

  She wore a red velvet hood with silver filigree, and long pendants that caressed her cheeks. Her velvet jacket had a high collar; a long tunic concealed her figure, but Mason shut his eyes, and remembered every exquisite curve of that lovely body.

  He remembered: for this was Laylat, the daughter of Lilith, with long black hair and wide dark eyes. And when she smiled, he had no remaining doubt. More than that, there was something in her eyes, something playing about the corners of her mouth which told him that he and this lovely creature had met before, had wandered in that mysterious borderland between life and death.

  “What has happened?” he asked. “And who are you?”

  “I am Layla, the khan’s daughter,” she answered; and the voice was as familiar as the name. “We found you in the valley, wounded and unconscious, and your servant also. We found the sacred book in the crevice of a rock. Arab thieves must have taken it, and when they met you, they must have mistaken you for one of us, and shot you and your servant. Or so my father says, for I was asleep when all that happened.”

  “How long have I been here?”

  “It is two days now. And I have been praying for you, begging for your life.” She clapped her hands, and when a servant entered, she said, “Tell my father that our friend is awake and well.”

  Outside, a beggar whined for alms. Mason asked, “Is that the blind man by the well?”

  Layla nodded.

  “Give him a piece of silver, for me, and tell him that his prayer to the Lord Peacock was answered.”

  Layla’s face did not change, but he thought he saw a flash of understanding in her eyes. She rose, and went to the door. By now, Mason was sure that he had left no footprints in the shrine of the peacock, and that the daughter of Lilith had left no traces; yet he was equally certain that he and the khan’s daughter had faced the Presence together.

  Khosru Khan stepped into the great hall, and greeted his guest. “I have heard that Arabs from the river raided your camp, leaving none alive. And now that no duty takes you away, stay here and be one of us.”

  Mason looked for a moment at the slender figure silhouetted against the arched doorway; Layla was handing the blind beggar a coin. Then Mason said, “My blindness was greater than his, and he gave me the gift of sight. Ever since I left here, I have seen what I had not seen before.”

  The khan stroked his beard and smiled a little. “But Layla had seen you before, and now she is glad.”

  WEB OF WIZARDRY

  Originally published in Spicy Mystery Stories, December 1942.

  Chapter 1

  The Weaver

  The garden was Persian; the fountain was silvered by the moon which rose over Shiraz, where Hafiz had once written a verse to the mole on the breast of a Turki dancing girl. And Barry Baylor should have done as well, for the girl on the silken soft rug was worth a poem in any language.

  Marta stretched, reaching out with long, slim legs, and arched her bosom against the lace panel of her nightgown as she laced fingers behind her head and looked up from the cushions. “I’ll have a mole tattooed…oh, almost any place you please, if you’ll just stop looking so down in the mouth. Allan won’t be back for a couple days!”

  “That’s just it!” Baylor rose, cat-quick, a tall and angular man with sun crisped hair and weary eyes; at the same move, he picked Marta to her feet. “Pack up now. Let’s be honest and come out in the open.”

  For a moment she snuggled in his arms, her red hair pillowed against his shoulder. “Don’t be silly, Barry. I can’t leave Allan. We’re not hurting him this way, we would the other way.”

  Her logic tempted him; then, resolutely, “We’ve got to quit.”

  “It was an accident—we didn’t plan all this.”

  He nodded. “No…but we can stop it. All or nothing.”

  She looked up, wide eyed, and sa
w that he meant it. Then Marta laughed softly. “You’d better consult a magician, darling. With the right spell, Allan will be fed up with me, he’ll kick me out, he’ll fall in love with—oh, a Turki dancing girl, he’ll send me to you with his compliments, please take the wench, Barry, be a good chap, won’t you?”

  * * * *

  That was how it started; that was why Barry Baylor, riding from Shiraz, stood in the entrance of the cavern in which webs of wizardry were woven; where a witch muttered spells, and bound them fast with knots of colored yarn.

  Aisha was old beyond belief, and uglier than anything but time could make a human. For the moment, she squatted beside a smoldering fire, instead of bending over a loom. Grizzled, greasy, a rag-bag with glittering eyes; but her voice amazed Baylor with its smoothness when she said, “O Man, you come to change the web of destiny, you come to change the patterns that Allah has made. The blessing you seek will become a doom and Satan the Damned will mock you. So rub your head and go your way, and the peace upon you.”

  But Baylor had come to rebuild the fate of three persons. For the duration of the war, there would be no more rug buying; soon he would leave Iran, and without Marta, for he had stayed too long, trying to persuade her, and now, he dared not tell her that tickets home would leave them with not enough to tip the stewards. And after so many nights of thinking in circles, it seemed logical to consult a magician.

  Baylor said to the hag by the fire, “I know what I want, and it is not advice.”

  Aisha laughed softly. “You will not listen, yet I must warn you, for that is the law, the law that Allah has imposed on djinni and men and angels.”

  The murky cavern was larger than it had at first seemed to Baylor. He was puzzled and disturbed by the tricks his vision played, for despite the dimness of hearth and wavering torch, he could now see for a vast distance which must reach beyond the heart of the mountain, and further than any eyes should penetrate. Space stretched without limit, and luminous haze, drifting like wind driven mist, billowed about the small looms, the hundreds of looms, each with its partially completed rug.

  He advanced further into the reek and eerie glow and said, “Then I am warned and what comes next is my business, not yours. Weave me a web, so that the days to come will be different from the days that have passed.”

  “There are three of you,” she said.

  Baylor started. “Who told you?”

  Aisha sighed and tucked a greasy gray lock back under a greasy red velvet hood. “They come for love or gold or vengeance. Could I mistake one for the other?”

  She gestured at the nearest looms. There might be other patterns, but these rugs were in the manner of Shiraz, with small figures of men and beasts and birds scattered among the arabesque lines of border and field. “I weave the symbols of your wish into the web, and what I weave becomes your destiny. I can have robbers waylay him, or an avalanche bury him, or a horse fall with him, or his servants slay him.”

  “Shut up, you old fool!” he cut in. “I could settle it that way myself.”

  She rose, lithe as a girl, which made her even more repulsive. She stepped to one of the many small looms and pointed at the tight stretched warp. Only enough weft had been cast to make the striped web. Thus far, not one knot of the pile had been tied. Aisha said, “Whatever I weave, that is the pattern of your tomorrows.”

  For a moment, Baylor forgot Marta and the gardens of Shiraz: The rock beneath his feet became clouds, and power intoxicated him; for he had lived in Iran too long to doubt that weird woman. Thus he knew that for all the yesterdays which ignorance had marred, there was a correction, and that the end would make a harmony of what had started in disorder.

  When chilly caution crept into the drunkenness of that high moment, he told himself, “Try it, if it doesn’t work right, stop the weaving. You can’t lose!”

  He wondered for a moment how one could pay the weaver of wizardry. He wondered why the mistress of destiny was ugly and greasy and old, and why she lived in a cave instead of in a palace with high tiled walls and gilded cupolas.

  “What does this cost?”

  “No more than you can pay, and no less. I will demand when you believe from knowing, and what can I ask that the master of his own fate cannot pay?”

  He had no answer. She picked hanks of yarn, and began tying Senna knots, first of one color, then of another. Her skinny fingers danced like motes in a moonbeam; Baylor, who had seen many weavers, could not quite believe that any pattern could grow so swiftly.

  Aisha muttered as she squatted there, swaying to the rhythm of her mumbling chant. She shot a weft thread across and back again, so swiftly that there was scarcely a break in the flicker of fingers tying knots. Small figures grew before his eyes. Tomorrow was being shaped. He protested, “I’ve not told you yet—you don’t know—”

  Aisha ignored him. Her eyes were half closed, as though she shaped a pattern that existed in her mind. That damnable mumbling, hissing, crooning; sometimes the sound made Baylor think of bats cheeping and birds twittering; again, he thought that he could distinguish words, some of them in languages which he understood. And the cavern’s quivering haze tricked his eyes. There were momentary flashes of far off vistas.

  “You don’t know—” His voice became a croak. “Wait till I tell you—”

  Her fingers danced on, the greasy red velvet cap with its golden coins and golden braid bobbed. Now her eyes were tightly closed, and when in fear and wrath, Baylor caught her shoulder, he yelled and let go.

  That skinny frame beneath the rotting rags was no more to be checked than an avalanche. He was not even sure that he had actually touched the witch; his hand tingled as from a barrier of force which cut Aisha from the world of space and time. Small figures took shape, angular figures like a child’s drawing on a wall, yet there was no denying their identity.

  Allan Ostrom was there, and Marta, and Baylor. And then there were the symbols of events.

  Baylor choked from cursing. He turned and stumbled from the cavern mouth, and lurched into the saddle. He spurred his horse down the steep trail and galloped toward the plain, and Shiraz.

  He was shivering, and drenched with sweat. And when his panic dimmed, unease took its place. Out in the moonlight and the open, he told himself that old Zohrab’s crazy tales had upset him, that he had been worrying too much about Marta; that wired-edged nerves had cracked when he forced himself to reach for that horrible recluse who squatted in a cave and mumbled.

  But he could not shake off the depression, caused by feeling that a blind, mad thing was shaping his tomorrows. He began to understand, as he had never before, why Moslems in the presence of the uncanny recite, “I betake me to the Lord of the Daybreak for refuge from Satan; and from the evils of the night; and from the spells of women who blow on knots.”

  He knew now that blowing on knots was more than an obscure expression to puzzle occidental scholars.

  Then, as his long ride ended in the first light of dawn, new life came into him, and he laughed. Too much brandy, too much sleep lost, wondering if he could take Marta back to the States, wondering what a rug buyer could do, back home, after all these years of going from Shiraz to Kirman to Sulaimanya; he knew Iran, and nothing else. His panic proved that he’d come far too close to going native.

  “If it works, good. If it doesn’t, no harm done,” he told himself, then shouted to Zohrab, the porter at the gate.

  Chapter 2

  Pot of Gold

  That very day, returning from an inspection of the truck and bus stations he was managing, Allan Ostrom dropped in for cocktails with Baylor; he brought Marta with him. She was part of his pride, part of a self-assurance and smugness which infuriated Baylor.

  Ostrom, gray, distinguished, a leader in modernizing Iran, now that the Nazis had been interned; the man was good. And Baylor, with only one moth-eaten servant, old Zohrab, was the first to
admit that Allan Ostrom had a right to be complacent about life. But now Baylor’s wrath reached a new high. He was thinking, “I’m a flop. I consult magicians while this go-getter does things… Marta’s right, she can’t leave him, not for me.”

  Ostrom inquired about the rug business, as though he did not already know it was damned beyond any hope, at least until after the war. Shipping was too valuable, insurance rates were way up. Ostrom said, magnificently, “Too bad you’re not a technical man, Barry. Ever so many openings for engineers today.” He chuckled indulgently, made a grand gesture. “Oh, well—”

  Marta cut in, “Allan! After all!”

  Baylor was not becoming red. He sat there, smiling. “Times change. Ups and downs, you know.”

  But for a moment, he wondered if this was a working out of Aisha’s magic. Ostrom had never been so tactless, so condescending. Baylor’s unnatural calmness came from thinking of what he had told Aisha: “I could arrange it that way myself…” As though considering someone else’s problem, he asked himself if, after all, that lordly fellow shouldn’t be killed.

  Ostrom went on, as he swirled his gin and bitters, “Artistic temperament, eh? But you’re really a good business man, Barry.”

  Baylor rose, still smiling. “Yes, when there is some business.”

  “Ha! Philosophical.”

  Then Baylor flipped the dregs of his drink into Ostrom’s face. “Get out of my house, you conceited—!”

  Ostrom, sputtering and incredulous, leaped to his feet. Baylor uncorked the punch he had been saving for months, the punch delayed on Marta’s account. The impact surprised him. He could hardly believe that he had struck with his fist. The pop sounded as though made by a hickory axe helve. Ostrom staggered back across the terrace. Out on his feet, he still moved, clawing blindly as he dropped.