Flame Winds

by Norvell W. Page

  A faint breeze stirred across the stinking floor of the arena, but to Prester John’s nostrils it brought the scent of jasmine and of musk. He shuddered and stood firm. There was devil’s trickery here. But where was the menace of a slave girl dancing? The flutter of her draperies wove a spell, and it seemed that as her swaying body told its ancient story he caught a song that murmured from her red ripe lips.

  “My hair,” she whispered, “has the fragrance of spikenard and of myrrh, and my arms are wonderously soft. There is forgetfulness in my eyes and rest in the breath of my mouth,” she sang, “and I shall pillow thy weary head and give thee dreamless sleep. Come to me, mighty warrior, come.”

  The butterfly touch of her draperies brushed Prester John’s face, and he knew that he was very tired and that rest would be sweet. He knew that no battle was worth the empty cup it lifted to the victor’s lips; and that struggle was vain.

  “I will sing to thee sweet songs,” she murmured, “and still the wild beating of thy heart. My hands that are odored with musk shall cool the fever of thy brow and all this fretful turmoil that is living shall be forgot… forgot—”

  It seemed to Prester John that the drums beat more slowly, and the tinkle of the cymbal grew more faint. Rest, he thought. Rest. He covered his burning eyes with his hands, and the heaviness of his body dragged him to his knees. The sand was soft. He dropped his hands and the veils fluttered like dying birds before his face. The glimmer of the woman’s body was infinitely desirable. It was queer that, through those veils, he could see another thing, a white thing like a face, that gibbered at him with soundless lips. He tried to brush it aside, and it would not go. He wanted to rest and the thing disturbed him. His fists clenched in answer—and suddenly he knew what it was. He was looking into the dead, tortured face of Kassar!

  With a great surge, Prester John came to his feet. His arms crossed before his eyes, and he staggered back on slow, leaden limbs. The drumbeats quickened and, even through his flesh, he could see the furious dancing of the woman, dancing in triumph, in high glee. And her eyes, that had been rich and dark, were gleeful, and behind her red lips, he could see sharp small teeth. He dragged down his arms and hoarsely, like a man long dead, he spoke:

  “I know thee, woman! Thou art death!”

  A scream burst from the lips of the dancing girl, and suddenly her draperies were black and from their folds, horrid, nameless things were peering. Her face twisted and the flesh drooped from it, sagged and was gone. It was a death’s face that peered forth at him there in the awful stillness of the arena. A great surge of strength roared through his body and, with long bounds, he sprang toward the awful specter. A madness was upon him. Now, now, he would conquer death! He would wrench that spectral head loose from its filthy robes. He would break it into fragments on the sands. He rushed and the woman, waiting, leered at him and reached out bony arms for his embrace. Prester John shuddered to a halt.

  He pointed a rigid arm toward the hole from which this specter had sprung. “Go,” he said stiffly. “Go. You will embrace me soon enough, but until that day—begone!”

  The bony arms sagged and the figure dwindled. Where there had been bones, there was a glimmering whiteness—and then nothing. For a while, the black robes stood, empty, and then they slipped down and were one with the black sand.

  “Yet, stay!” Prester John cried.

  From the emptiness of the air, a voice answered, whispering, “Do you bid me stay, man?”

  “I have conquered,” Prester John said steadily, “and there are certain questions you must answer, for I have made a vow. How may one man rule Turgohl?”

  The far whisper, fading, answered back: “Who rules the princess rules Turgohl.”

  “How may a man rule her?”

  The whisper was so faint it might be there was no sound at all, but in Prester John’s mind rang an answer: “Ask of the crystal ball!”

  Prester John shivered and looked about him. There was a high, triumphant shout ringing in the air and the shadows had crossed the black sands to lift toward the eastern side of the arena. There was red gold in the air from the slanting rays of the westering sun and, across the sands, men were marching, thick-pressed ranks of priests and guards coming to fight the battle of their gods who had failed. For an instant, Prester John glared toward them, and then he laughed, the high, booming laughter that had launched him into a thousand battles.

  Empty-handed, his naked body streaked with blood, Prester John turned and marched to meet the attack of a thousand men. Their faces glared toward him and their glistening swords lifted to strike him down. He marched on steadily, unswerving, and a finger of golden light stretched out to kindle the fire of his hair, and the weapons fell from the hands of the men. They sagged to their knees and prostrated themselves on the black sands; they bumped their foreheads in the dust.

  Like the far, faint whisper of death, a sigh breathed up from the prostrate men, from the waiting, blood-sated throng:

  “Thou art the man.”

  VII

  THE RED GATE was before Prester John, and he thrust open its brazen grille and strode through the brief darkness of the archway beneath the tiers of seats. In the reddening sunlight beyond, he saw the whirling ranks of particolored mobs of priests and guards, thick as vultures on a corpse. Prester John’s eyes shot beyond them impatiently, combed the narrow court to find the horse Bourtai had promised. For once, he was surfeit of slaughter. Yet if these shavelings pressed him too close—

  “Hold, man!” a voice boomed out, and Prester John’s quick eyes swung to a tall, gaunt figure garbed and masked in cloth-of-gold and surrounded by rank on rank of golden priests. “Hold, man, and answer me. What said Death to you?”

  Prester John snorted and turned aside, striking out with his brawny arms. Another strident voice hailed him: “Do not answer him, man. Bring your secret to me and I will make you rich beyond your dreams.”

  “No, to me!”

  “No, to me!”

  From every direction, men were swirling into this courtyard, and the colors massed in solid ranks. There was a man in a purple mask, and another in scarlet and another in green—the vulture wizards. Prester John threw up his powerful arms.

  “Listen, all of you,” he cried. “I shall tell my secret to one man and one man only. Come to me when one of you rules the city completely. Not before. Now fight it out!”

  For a moment, stunned silence held the crowded concourse and, in that instant, a wide gate opened and through it Prester John glimpsed a beckoning hand and the silver sheen of a horse’s hide. With a roar, Prester John flung himself forward. A few hands clawed at his shoulders, but there was fear even in their touch and none restrained him long. In a half dozen lunging strides, Prester John reached the gate and thrust through. Bourtai’s wrinkled monkey face grinned up into his.

  “Aye, master, I knew thou must win!”

  Without a word, Prester John vaulted to the horse’s back. His powerful hand twisted into Bourtai’s ragged robe, and his naked heels drove into the silver stallion’s sides. Hoofs beat thunderously in the covered way, rang on an anvil of cobbles, and the uproar of the arena faded behind. Prester John dumped Bourtai’s squirming body across the horse’s withers before him and hammered on. He put the setting sun on his right hand and galloped for the South Gate. Once, between high gold-tinted towers, he glimpsed the sun. It was low, but it had not yet touched the Suntai hills. If he hurried, there was time. A swift race across the hills and the land where the flame wind blew would be left behind. Out there on the clean, savage plains, he would gather Kassar’s clans and wipe this wizard tribe from the earth. Afterward, there would be looting and riches for all—and he would rule the city!

  “Where… where goest… thou, m-master?” The words were jolted out of Bourtai as he bounced, belly down, across the horse.

  “To Ahriman, or to hell,” Prester John said savagely. “Does it matter?”

  “N-nay, master, but why flee? T-the city is yours f
or the t-tak-ing.”

  Prester John made no answer. His weighty right hand pinned Bourtai down. His left, knotted in the bridle, guided the horse. There was a joy in the glide of muscles between his thighs, in the sweet clean sweep of air in his face. The rhythm of the beating hoofs flowed through him. Bourtai kept gasping questions, but there was no answer from the grim bearded lips, and after a while he was silent. Prester John was beginning to feel his weariness. The wound in his thigh throbbed, and there was stiffness in his dagger-slashed cheek. The whip of the wind was cold against his sweat-streaked, naked chest, but the South Gate loomed ahead. He bent far forward and thudded his heels against the horse’s flanks. Guards atop the portal were staring toward him, and there was a hunched and cowled figure standing there beside the way, a figure draped in unrelieved black and with a black mask across his face!

  Anger surged into Prester John’s chest, and he whirled the horse that way. In a moment, there would be one wizard less to summon his cohorts, to fight the men of the khan! In a moment—The horse reared sharply, striking the thin air with slashing hoofs, and a neigh of terror burst from distended nostrils. Prester John fought savagely and struck the stallion between the ears. It thudded down, but turned aside from the path in which he had been driven. The wizard had not moved, but Prester John could feel the pressure of the malignant eyes behind the slits of the mask.

  Once more, Prester John wheeled the stallion to the charge, and once more the horse reared and all but threw him. Savagely, Prester John flung himself to earth and leaped toward the still figure. One stride, two, he took, then something that remained invisible struck him violently on chest and forehead and thigh as if he had plunged against a stone wall. His head rang from the blow, and he reeled backward, tried once more to hurl himself to the attack. This time he took only a single stride before the fearful impact stopped him.

  “You are my prisoner, man!” intoned the figure in black, softly. “You must go where I tell you.”

  “To Ahriman with you!” Prester John snarled. He knotted a hand into the horse’s mane and leaped upon its back, flung it toward the South Gate. A single great stride the stallion took, then its head doubled under and there was a crunching sound of bone cracking under impact. Prester John was hurled to earth—and the horse was dead!

  “This way, quickly, Wan Tengri!” called Bourtai.

  Prester John reeled to his feet and turned in answer to the call, then saw Bourtai gesturing from a dark runway between two mud-walled houses. Prester John’s challenging gaze swept a swift circuit of the narrow way before the gate. Out of narrow streets, two other tall, masked figures strode, one in silver and one in blue.

  “Hold, man!” they shouted.

  With an oath, Prester John hurled himself toward the runway where Bourtai crouched and stumbled in darkness to follow the light touch of the crippled thief s hand. “They will not let you leave Turgohl, Wan Tengri,” whispered the thief. “Any one of them will kill you rather than let you fall into another’s hands. If one seizes you, and you will not talk, he might change you into an ape to guard his garden or send you, a dull slave, to the galley oars until you had learned obedience. The honors Ahriman promised you, master, you must win.”

  Prester John’s words snarled in his throat. “I will win,” he said violently. “Ahriman will do well to guard his own!”

  On silent feet, he padded through the dark where Bourtai led him. More than once he stumbled and the thief’s hand briefly steadied his arm. He was consumed with weariness. When finally Bourtai pointed to a dark doorway and afterward to a pit that led downward, Prester John flung himself into it with a violence that almost cost a bad fall. The smoky flare of torchlight and the fetid stench of the salt-mine tunnels was welcome in his nostrils. He braced a rigid arm against the wall and stood with his chest heaving for breath.

  “Bourtai,” he muttered, “I must rest. What night is this?”

  “The fifth, master, of the Mating Moon.”

  Prester John gulped a breath of relief and afterward walked on more steadily until he came to the chamber where a dung fire sent up its smoky flames and the feverish-eyed rats of Turgohl crouched to feed. Without a word, he flung himself down upon the couch and plunged into sleep.

  Now, when a man has exhausted the last reservoirs of his strength, his sleep should be deep and dreamless. It was strange, then, that gargoyles of humanity began to flit through Prester John’s brain. Slumbering, he fought again through the three battles of Ahriman; he heard again the luring song of Death and his own commanding voice shout the question: “How may one man rule Turgohl?”

  It seemed to Prester John that it was his own throat that must answer that question, and he was a man wrestling with a nightmare. There was a part of him that wanted to voice that answer, and there was another part that would not. Up from the depths of sleep, he soared. He opened his eyes to find the wrinkled, malicious face of Bourtai stooped over him!

  Grimly then, Prester John smiled—and closed his eyes again. “Get on with your spells, Bourtai,” he said thickly. “When I wish to speak, I shall, but not before. This is only the fifth night of the Mating Moon.”

  “Pardon, master.” Bourtai’s voice was mocking in its humility. “It is the sixth, and the dark hour of the Dog. Thou hast slept long.”

  Heavily, Prester John swung his thick limbs to the floor, stretched his great bronzed body. The wound in his thigh had been washed and sealed with balsam. Irritably, he ripped off the gum. “Open wounds heal best, thou fool,” he said roughly. “Where is the food I ordered bought?”

  Bourtai’s face wrinkled with delight. “Thy jewels were thought out of being, master. Didst thou not slit Tsien Hui’s throat?”

  For a moment, Prester John glowered at the apelike face with its beady eyes, then an answering grin stirred his solid lips. “No doubt I overlooked that one throat among so many,” he agreed. “Give me of thy thieves’ slop, then, for this night there is man’s work to be done!”

  Bourtai’s eyes gleamed greedily, and he darted away to fill an earthen bowl. Prester John let his eyes quest gloomily over the cavern where smoke hung in writhing bluish wreaths. The sting of it in his eyes and nostrils was a relief from the filth stench of the hole. His eyes returned to the couch and found there his yellow silken clothing and the great white cloak of the khan. His horn bow, his sword and lariat hung from gleaming crystal knobs on the wall, and the sight of them brought life and joy flooding back to his heart.

  “Thou art a good thief, Bourtai,” he said as he accepted the steaming bowl the man brought back. “Else a good wizard. Didst call back my tools to my hand?”

  “Nay, master,” Bourtai said humbly. “‘Twas thy own great magic, never doubt it. While thou wast sleeping, and in the dark, thy clothing and thy weapons returned.”

  Prester John grunted, his eyes suspiciously on the malicious eyes of Bourtai. “Thou hast spoken, Monkey-face,” he acknowledged flatly. “It is my hope there will be no need for thee to eat thy words.” He tossed off the hot food with a gulp and felt its warmth flow through his veins. He stretched once more and tugged on the padded, golden silk, twined the lariat about his waist. The cloak across his shoulders was next, and he belted home sword and arrow quiver. When the bow hung once more about his neck, he felt a man again, and his good humor returned to flash from his gray eyes.

  “We begin, Bourtai,” he said. “Lead me first to a tower near where the flames dance and the crystal ball bobbles in the fountain.”

  “That roof, master, where once before we watched?”

  Prester John shook his head and smiled in his beard. “Nay, it is not high enough. We must be where I may commune with the spirits of the high air, my godfather and my godmother, the tengri.”

  Bourtai hesitated, then shrugged his crooked shoulders. “This way, master,” he acknowledged. “Thou art the man, and thou knowest.” He led toward one of the many tunnels of the mine.

  “I am the man,” Prester John acknowledged solemnly. He w
alked with a perceptible swagger of his broad shoulders and, softly, he began to hum through his nose. He was feeling his strength again, and his belly was warm. Certain things he had learned in his three battles, and with their aid he soon would be master of Turgohl. There would be a settlement for Kassar, and wealth for himself, and there was that matter of the vow. Almost, he could forget that throughout the city the tall, masked men with their priests and guards were searching for him; and what his fate would be if he fell into their hands. If they ever guessed that he knew no more than they themselves might conjecture—Wan Tengri threw back his head and sent his laughter booming along the smoke-streaked tunnel. Well, until they learned that, they would fear him and he could write his own warrants. There could be no waiting for the thirteenth night and the Hour of the Swine. It was a question of time before the thousands searching everywhere stumbled upon the salt mines, and then—all up with Prester John!

  “My master is happy,” Bourtai whispered. “It makes my heart glad.”

  “There are certain small things I need to know, my valiant ape,” Wan Tengri said lightly. “After that—why, after that we shall help ourselves to the treasures of Turgohl!”

  “And the princess?” Bourtai’s tone was sly.

  “Why, as to that, thou chattering ape,” said Wan Tengri lightly, “I have found princesses a somewhat cold and waspish lot. And time answers all questions, Bourtai, even the questions of Death.”

  Presently, they were climbing rickety ladders and a well gave way to a cellar, and a cellar to stairs that wound upward in the close circuit of a tower.

  “Those tunnels of thine lead everywhere, ape,” said Wan Tengri. “I wonder they do not burrow into the Flame Tower itself. Or into the treasury of Turgohl.”

  Bourtai, scrambling ahead up the spiraling steps, now running sideways like a crab to peer back and up into Prester John’s face, shook his head violently. “Nay, they are guarded by enchantment, master, by the magic of seven wizards so that no one of them can break its spell.”