E. Hoffmann Price's Fables of Ismeddin MEGAPACK®

by E. Hoffmann Price

  Suddenly Cooper knew that the Angels had no more to say. They had drawn back into the silence from which they had come. They had given him another lesson in magic, he realized as he ascended to the surface. For it was now plain that so long as the will and the soul of a man are strong, a way is opened.

  Head high, he looked into the moon and laughed. He said aloud to the waste lands and the shifting light and shadow, “They knew I’d not leave her here. Tough about Burleigh, but when did he ever give me a chance?”

  Now that he had faced the loss of Lilu, it seemed very small, this matter of whether or not he killed Burleigh by demanding escape from Mosul. When a man dares to curse gods and Angels, a power grows in him, and he cannot quench it, nor does he want to.

  Cooper went back to his house. He got his flashlight. He did not need any implements. The Arabs would have left enough tools in the excavation. But the heavy knife that Lilu used to mince mutton and eggplant would be handy for silent digging. One could crouch and ply the blade, where one would have to stand to use a shovel. Also, a one-handed implement left the other free to hold a light. He remembered all this at the door and went back for the knife.

  When he waked down the narrow streets of the town he was troubled by the thought of robbing Roger Kane. It was not that Kane’s one-hundred-thousand-dollar endowment and an Iraqi government permit gave him any exclusive moral right to what had been buried long before the foundations of Dar Sharrukin were laid. Indeed, Cooper knew from the first that his own right was greater. Two Angels had sent Lilu to him, and the silver image that governed her circle of material existence surely was part of her strange being. And the government could not give a woman’s life to an archaeologist. That was plain.

  There was much about Babylonian magic that he did not know, not even intuitively, but it was certain that he had a right to the silvery symbol, which perhaps was a focal point of the forces which let Lilu materialize. Yet he was uneasy. He felt that instead of slipping into the excavation by stealth he should go openly and manfully and ask Roger Kane for that small gift.

  However, he knew that Kane would not grant it to him. Kane had curious scruples. He worshiped abstractions such as science and learning. This mission in Babil was sacred. One could no more hope to bribe or browbeat or beg him from his purpose than one could have deflected Peter the Hermit from the crusade he preached.

  “If he doesn’t know, he’s not hurt,” Cooper argued. “If I told him Lilu’s existence depended on it, he’d think I was crazy. Maybe I am crazy, too, but look at how mad facts can be. Even if he believed me, he could not ethically give away any of his find. It belongs to a university, to be labeled with a dead man’s name. He’d be sorry, awfully sorry; he’d be between two fires and he’d say ‘no.’ That would always be between us.”

  So, since he was keeping Kane from being troubled by an evil choice, Cooper felt better about it all. Stealthily he crept toward the sleeping camp. At least one of the soldiers must be on post, but Iraqi Arabs were no more addicted to insomnia than any other kind. Particularly when there was no officer to have them jailed or flogged for sleeping on duty.

  Moonlight made the task more difficult. If he waited, the Arabs would uncover the statuette, and under Kane’s keen eye. It was uncanny how these things were timed. A man had come from America, had hired scores of laborers, had dug away uncounted tons of rubbish so that one man could in a few minutes dig up a silver image not much longer than his hand. But as he wormed his way through the shadows, just past Kane’s tent, Cooper stopped. His breath was failing. Something tightened his throat. Electric twitchings tickled his skin, played at the base of his skull.

  The awesome picture of how one man’s fate is linked with the fate of men far off and unknown disturbed Cooper. He was almost afraid of what he was about to do—shatter the shackles of fate, take Lilu by the hand and lead her with him through this cleft he had made in the circle of his destiny. And seeing at once all the things that had led to this moment, all the acts and thoughts of men divided by miles and years, he knew how awful it is to tamper with the links of destiny.

  Then Cooper hardened his heart, and he moved past the sentry who crouched on the edge of the Pit. The fellow snored, of course. His rifle lay beside him. It was barely visible in the blotch of shadow that concealed him. And Kane, Cooper knew from passing the tent, was sound asleep. A cot creaked, and a breathing that carried clear in the silence had made that certain.

  Cooper’s instruction grew in detail as he approached the designated corner of the pit. That was a peculiar aspect of the magic that Harût and Marût taught. Magic was logical. It was merely a matter of being in tune with the breath and pulse of the world; and all things of creation were not only revealed, but also subjected to the magician. Ritual and incantation did not seem to enter at all. And this being in tune, Cooper now realized, would never leave him; no matter where he went, his wisdom would also go.

  Here, where the Arabs had exposed archaic sun-dried brick, where granite from the far-off hills shaped a pediment, gleaming smooth in the blue-black shadows; where part of a tiled wall had resisted the shock of conquest and centuries; this was the frieze of parading archers the Angels had described. Cooper knelt and plied the heavy knife for perhaps three minutes, silently and without any misgivings. He did not even need the flashlight beam. His fingers now had vision, he had strange new senses he could not name, and these were all concentrated on the hidden statuette.

  Wonder shook him. In his thoughts he said, “I see it already. I hear it speaking to me. I smell Lilu’s perfume. I touch the smooth silk and I touch Lilu also. I taste the clean silver.” This was amazing, this uncanny concentration of every sense, but most baffling was that addition of new senses. He could also perceive things with respect to their places in time itself. At once he saw this spot when man for the first time erected a building on it; when bearded men called it Dar Sharrukin; when mitered priests put a silver statuette into a crypt so that not even time could destroy the foundations. Also, he was looking as far into the future. When a man breaks the shackles of fate, the present and past and future become one!

  Now that he had the statuette in his hands, he could not quite separate his identity with that of the priests. He was not sure whether he was removing it or putting it into the crypt. Whether the men about were helping or hindering him. It was not until a yell shattered the complex time web that Cooper knew what had happened.

  His uncannily certain digging had undermined some loose bricks. They slid noisily down a slope and made a stack of tiles clatter. The sentry started, yelled, then fired a shot. The bullet went wide of its mark, of course. Cooper snatched his prize and scrambled up the slope. His flashlight clattered down grade, falling from his pocket.

  Cooper was not afraid. He knew that he could not be captured. A soldier, half asleep, came empty-handed to head him off. They crashed, rolled down the outer slope. Cooper was the first to recover. He jabbed sharply with his knee, and the soldier was knocked breathless.

  But the escape was hampered. A flashlight blazed, blinding Cooper as he wriggled clear of his gasping opponent. Just a dazzling flicker, scarcely long enough to identify him, but enough to leave his eyes quite useless for an instant. Right when split seconds counted, Cooper was virtually in blackness darker than the Well of the Angels. His head whirled from the shock of landing, and the cries of the aroused camp seemed to come from every direction at once. The super senses so lavishly and needlessly crowded into the digging were now wholly lacking; or what remained of them was only enough to be confusing.

  He still had a chance, but he could not regain the all-knowing and all-seeing power of the Pit. A man’s hands closed on his threshing legs. Another yelled and snatched at the silver statuette. That was when Cooper thrust with the heavy knife.

  The man cried out and let go. Cooper kicked free from the other one. He gained his feet. He could no
w see. He had a clear start. Then he recognized the man he had stabbed. It was all very plain in the beam of the flashlight that lay on the ground. Even moonlight would have sufficed.

  Cooper was already running, swiftly, stretching long legs. Arabs howled, “He has slain the sahib! Beware!” Others cursed, and two fired crazily at the man who raced easily in and out among the mounds. In a few seconds they could no longer see him, though they continued firing and yelling instead of pursuing.

  It was quite true. Cooper had in that one instant of human panic lost control. For one instant his magic had failed. He had blindly stabbed, and his friend was dead. Cooper knew that Kane must be dead. He knew that this was the life that the Angels had demanded.

  He knew also that no pursuit could overtake him, so he walked slowly among the mounds and tamarisk of the plain of Babil; and the moon rose white and high while he walked.

  He said, over and over, “This proves that. I am outside the circle of destiny. I have broken the shackles of fate. It was once said that a king is next to God, and I am more powerful than any king ever was. From now on the Angels of the Well will serve in everything.”

  The knife? There were dozens like it in Mosul. The flashlight? Presumably one of Kane’s. Footprints? The police force of Mosul was sketchy. Moreover, a full-fledged magician with two Angels to serve him was exempt from law. Cooper no longer believed this, he knew it; a calm, certain knowledge.

  This knowledge was so solemn that he halted not far from the Well, toward which he had been walking all that while. Harût and Marût had, in their malice, planned this from the first, and he had blindly demanded their gift. He began to think of how he and Kane had gone to school. How good that friendship must have been to have endured and become ripe and rich about a campfire in Mosul.

  This was plainly not a matter for remorse. Remorse was for the survivor whose recklessness had caused a fatal auto crash; for the hunter who had pointed an “unloaded” gun at a comrade; for one who had cursed his parents or struck a child. But a man who has stepped out of the circle of destiny could not say, “I did not know.”

  He stood there, and without trying to speak those words. He could not have spoken them if he had tried. He did not want their futility in his ears and mouth. Finally he remembered that he had gone for a silver statuette, and that it was in his hand; in the one that was not stained with a friends blood.

  He looked at the little image. He looked beyond it, in time and space, and saw it in more than Lilu’s face and figure. Now that he had paid the price, he knew fully what it meant to break the shackles of kismet. He could follow any act to its remote origins, a million years ago, and trace its every root and source. He could follow every act to its uttermost consequence.

  Thus he halted at the entrance of the Well instead of going down into it to curse God and the Angels.

  Knowing the immensity of the thing he had learned to do, he could not revile them for the price they had taken. Yet Lilu was not worth a friend’s life, so he set the image near the coping, where drifting sand would soon bury it. Then Cooper walked westward, away from the broad Tigris, and away from Mosul.

  Soon the sun would rise behind him and blaze against his bare head. He would feel this only for a few minutes. Perhaps he would not feel it at all. For inside his head there was now a vast whirling flame. While there was no salvation for a fool who tries to change the pattern of the web, Cooper knew that there was merit in declining the harvest of folly. He did not any longer want to escape. And he knew equally that it was folly to blame the Angels. They, too, were paying the cost of broken kismet.

  So he walked, knowing that not long after sunrise he would leave his body in the sands west of Mosul. Possibly he would meet Kane somewhere on the march. Good old Kane; he’d not be resentful.

  Cooper did not hear the Angels sighing in the Well. He did not hear Harût say to Marût, “We should have told him that the soldiers had been plotting to murder Kane for his canned goods and then to desert and become bandits in the Sinjar Hills. In another few days they would have gotten up their courage.” He did not hear Marût answer, “That would not have changed the issue, for a man does what he will do.”

  Then there was silence in the Well, for the two Angels were sad. They were thinking of the day when they had been warned against the wiles of the two Kashmiri girls sent by Satan the Damned—

  THE GIRL FROM SAMARCAND

  Originally published in Weird Tales, May 1929.

  As her guest set the dainty bone china cup on the onyx-topped, teak tabouret and sank back among the embroidered cushions, Diane knew to the syllable the words which were to filter forth with the next breath of smoke; for three years as Hammersmith Clarke’s wife had convinced her that that remark was inevitable.

  “My dear, where did you ever get those perfectly gorgeous rugs?”

  And Diane, true to form, smiled ever so faintly, and luxuriated in the suspicion of a yawn: the ennui of an odalisk hardened to the magnificence of a seraglio carpeted with an ancient Feraghan rug, and hung with silken witcheries from the looms of Kashan. Diane saw the wonder permeate her friend’s soul and heard it surge into words.

  “The rugs? Why—well, I married them along with Ham, you might say. Yes, they are rather pretty, aren’t they? But they’re an awful pest at times—”

  “Naturally,” agreed Louise, who lived in a loft in the Pontalba Building, where she could look down into the Plaza where Jackson reins in his brazen horse and lifts his brazen hat in salutation to the French Quarter of New Orleans. “You simply couldn’t let the maid clean—”

  “Maid? Lord help us, but I daren’t touch them myself! I tried it, once. That heaven-sent prayer-rug”—Diane indicated an ancient Ghiordes, a sea-green splendor worth more than his right eye to any collector—“looked a bit dingy. And Ham caught me at it. What was left of my hair just fell short of a close shingle. Do you know, one day I caught him filling the bathtub with milk—”

  “What?”

  “Precisely. Seems some expert claimed a milk bath improves the luster. So the little Bokhara—that blood-red creature beneath your feet—got a treatment fit for a Circassian beauty. I’m just waiting for him to bring home a duster of bird-of-paradise plumes for this venerable wreck.”

  Diane stroked what was left of the peachblow, sapphire and gold nap of an age-old Senna woven on a silken warp.

  “The truth of it is,” continued Diane, “I feel guilty of bigamy. The man was married to his rugs long before he ever met me. ’Member how we speculated on the pros and cons of polygamy the other day at Arnaud’s? Well, here I am one lone woman competing with a dozen odd favorites, and a new rival added to the harem every so often.”

  “Good lord, Diane, what next! You are unique. Why, one would think you were jealous of them.”

  “Well, I am!”

  “Outlandish as that fantastic husband of yours. I don’t know which is the more outré, his mania for these beautiful things with the impossible names, or your—heavens above, it does really seem like resentment against them. Now, if you’d married Peter”—Louise laughed metallically—“he’d never have given you time to be jealous of a rug.”

  “That’s just it,” flared Diane, “I could forgive flirtations and black eyes, and a reasonable degree of non-support. But these damned rugs—look at that!”

  Diane dug her cobraskin toe into the closely worn nap of the Feraghan carpet.

  “Look at it! Just a rug, the first time. But live with it day after day. See the witchery sparkling in it at sunset. Catch yourself losing yourself in the thrill of its three hundred years, wondering that all the ecstasy ever lost in tfie entire world could be imprisoned in a rug. Then see your one and only and otherwise adequate husband sitting of an evening, hours at a stretch, staring at it and dreaming of all the richness and glamor he’s lost through becoming civilized, learnin
g to wear shoes, and having only one woman, and she his wife, about the house. Yes, I called you up to have you listen to me get the indignation out of my soul. The truth of it is, Lou, that if I don’t get out of this atmosphere soon, I’ll go utterly mad. Some day I’m going to move in on you in your attic—anything to get away from all this!”

  “Do you mean to say,” began Louise with wide-spaced deliberation, “that you’d actually leave Ham because he likes to mess and poke round with his rugs, and spend most of his waking moments talking about them? Honestly, now—”

  “Good Lord, I could stand his talking about them. But”—Diane shuddered—“Lou, he loves them. Sits there, transfigured, like a saint contemplating the dewdrop glistening in the lotus cup.”

  “When I suggested, over at the Iron Gate, that you move in with me, I didn’t know that you were married—they all called you la belle Livaudaise, and you were the life of everything—and least of all, I never suspected anyone had you enshrined in magnificence like this. Better think it over, Di—I’ve been through the mill, and I know.”

  * * * *

  Diane from the first had been fascinated by the exotic atmosphere in which Clarke had planted her after their marriage; but in the end, seeing how they had become a part of him, she half-consciously hated them and their everlasting song of Bokhara and Herat of the Hundred Gardens: an unheard song to which Clarke listened, and replied in unspoken syllables. And thus it was that Diane learned that to live in Clarke’s apartment would be to become an accessory to those precious fabrics that were his hard-ridden hobby; for no woman would fit into the dim, smoky shadows of that titled salon unless bejeweled and diaphanously veiled she could dance with curious paces and gestures beneath the sullen glow of the great brazen mosque lamp as became the favorite of a khan in far-off Tartary. From the very beginning, Diane fought to keep her individuality untainted by the overwhelming personality of those damnably lovely fabrics from Shiraz and the dusty plains of Ferighan.