The Slayer of Souls

"I don't know. Selden says there are no roads, – not even a spotted trail. It's a wilderness left practically blank by the Geological Survey. Only the contours are marked, and Selden tells me that the altitudes are erroneous and the unnamed lakes and water courses are all wrong. He says it is his absolute conviction that the Geological Survey never penetrated this wilderness at all, but merely skirted it and guessed at what lay inside, because the map he has from Washington is utterly misleading, and the entire region is left blank except for a few vague blue lines and spots indicating water, and a few heights marked '1800.'"

He turned and began to pace the sitting-room, frowning, perplexed, undecided.

"Selden tells me," he said, "that the Yezidee, Arrak Sou-Sou, is in there and very busy doing something or other. He says that he can do nothing without you, and will explain why when we meet him."

"Yes, Victor."

Cleves turned on his heel and came over to where his wife stood beside the sunny window.

"I hate to ask you to go. I know that was the understanding. But this incessant danger – your constant peril – "

"That does not count when I think of my country's peril," she said in a quiet voice. "When are we to start? And what shall I pack in my trunk?"

"Dear child," he said with a brusque laugh, "it's a wilderness and we carry what we need on our backs. Selden meets us at a place called Glenwild, on the edge of this wilderness, and we follow him in on our two legs."

He glanced across at the mantel clock.

"If you'll dress," he said nervously, "we'll go to some shop that outfits sportsmen for the North. Because, if we can, we ought to leave on the one o'clock train."

She smiled; came up to him. "Don't worry about me," she said. "Because I also am nervous and tired; and I mean to make an end of every Yezidee remaining in America."

"Sanang, too?"

They both flushed deeply.

She said in a steady voice: "Between God and Erlik there is a black gulf where a million million stars hang, lighting a million million other worlds.

"Prince Sanang's star glimmers there. It is a sun, called Yramid. And it lights the planet, Yu-tsung. Let him reign there between God and Erlik."

"You will slay this man?"

"God forbid!" she said, shuddering. "But I shall send him to his own star. Let my soul be ransom for his! And may Allah judge between us – between this man and me."

Then, in the still, sunny room, the girl turned to face the East. And her husband saw her lips move as though speaking, but heard no sound.

"What on earth are you saying there, all to yourself?" he demanded at last.

She turned her head and looked at him across her left shoulder.

"I asked Sansa to help me… And she says she will."

Cleves nodded in a dazed way. Then he opened a window and leaned there in the sunshine, looking down into Madison Avenue. And the roar of traffic seemed to soothe his nerves.

But "Good heavens!" he thought; "do such things really go on in New York in 1920! Is the entire world becoming a little crazy? Am I really in my right mind when I believe that the girl I married is talking, without wireless, to another girl in China!"

He leaned there heavily, gazing down into the street with sombre eyes.

"What a ghastly thing these Yezidees are trying to do to the world – these Assassins of men's minds'!" he thought, turning away toward the door of his bedroom.

As he crossed the threshold he stumbled, and looking down saw that he had tripped over a white sheet lying there. For a moment he thought it was a sheet from his own bed, and he started to pick it up. Then he saw the naked blade of a knife at his feet.

With an uncontrollable shudder he stepped out of the shroud and stood staring at the knife as though it were a snake. It had a curved blade and a bone hilt coarsely inlaid with Arabic characters in brass.

The shroud was a threadbare affair – perhaps a bed-sheet from some cheap lodging house. But its significance was so repulsive that he hesitated to touch it.

However, he was ashamed to have it discovered in his room. He picked up the brutal-looking knife and kicked the shroud out into the corridor, where they could guess if they liked how such a rag got into the Ritz-Carlton.

Then he searched his bedroom, and, of course, discovered nobody hiding. But chills crawled on his spine while he was about it, and he shivered still as he stood in the centre of the room examining the knife and testing edge and point.

Then, close to his ear, a low voice whispered: "Be careful, my lord; the Yezidee knife is poisoned. But it is written that a poisoned heart is more dangerous still."

He had turned like a flash; and he saw, between him and the sitting-room door, a very young girl with slightly slanting eyes, and rose and ivory features as perfect as though moulded out of tinted bisque.

She wore a loose blue linen robe, belted in, short at the elbows and skirt, showing two creamy-skinned arms and two bare feet in straw sandals. In one hand she had a spray of purple mulberries, and she looked coolly at Cleves and ate a berry or two.

"Give me the knife," she said calmly.

He handed it to her; she wiped it with a mulberry leaf and slipped it through her girdle.

"I am Sansa," she said with a friendly glance at him, busy with her fruit.

Cleves strove to speak naturally, but his voice trembled.

"Is it you – I mean your real self – your own body?"

"It's my real self. Yes. But my body is asleep in my mulberry grove."

"In – in China?"

"Yes," she said calmly, detaching another mulberry and eating it. A few fresh leaves fell on the centre table.

Sansa chose another berry. "You know," she said, "that I came to Tressa this morning, – to my little Heart of Fire I came when she called me. And I was quite sleepy, too. But I heard her, though there was a night wind in the mulberry trees, and the river made a silvery roaring noise in the dark… And now I must go. But I shall come again very soon."

She smiled shyly and held out her lovely little hand, " – As Tressa tells me is your custom in America," she said, "I offer you a good-bye."

He took her hand and found it a warm, smooth thing of life and pulse.

"Why," he stammered in his astonishment, "you are real! You are not a ghost!"

"Yes, I am real," she answered, surprised, "but I'm not in my body, – if you mean that." Then she laughed and withdrew her hand, and, going, made him a friendly gesture.

"Cherish, my lord, my darling Heart of Fire. Serpents twist and twine. So do rose vines. May their petals make your path of velvet and sweet scented. May everything that is round be a pomegranate for you two to share; may everything that sways be lilies bordering a path wide enough for two. In the name of the Most Merciful God, may the only cry you hear be the first sweet wail of your first-born. And when the tenth shall be born, may you and Heart of Fire bewail your fate because both of you desire more children!"

She was laughing when she disappeared. Cleves thought she was still there, so radiant the sunshine, so sweet the scent in the room.

But the golden shadow by the door was empty of her. If she had slipped through the doorway he had not noticed her departure. Yet she was no longer there. And, when he understood, he turned back into the empty room, quivering all over. Suddenly a terrible need of Tressa assailed him – an imperative necessity to speak to her – hear her voice.

"Tressa!" he called, and rested his hand on the centre table, feeling weak and shaken to the knees. Then he looked down and saw the mulberry leaves lying scattered there, tender and green and still dewy with the dew of China.