Flame Winds (8 page)

“A hundred thousand to bow before thee, Christos,” he whispered. “Nay, what more could I promise? I will make no bribe to the gods. Come, Prester John, it is only once a man may die, and what better way may he go than battling against false gods?”

He saluted the flames with his sword and, holding it ready at his side, he marched toward that blistering core of pure white radiance. Tongues licked out to meet him like the thrusts of many swords. His skin seemed to crinkle with the heat, and he narrowed his eyes against the assault. He could smell now the singeing of his own beard. Almost, he could reach out with his sword tip to slash at the fire; but of what use was that? The sword hilt was hot in his hand. He could feel the furious winds that the flame sucked upward and, for an instant, even the fierce courage of Prester John wavered. Then his lips opened in a blurred shout, and he dropped his sword, flung himself with clutching arms straight toward the heart of the flame!

There was an instant of maddening pain, of searing heat—and it was gone! The blinding radiance winked out and Prester John found himself, wavering on his feet, embracing the headless corpse of the purple guard! With an oath, he wrenched the carcass aloft and hurled it from him, stood glaring about the arena. So this was the way the gods fought, to dare a man to his utmost—and then vanish from under his hands? Prester John threw his tensed arms high in challenge, shouting his wrath at the skies. Then his eyes widened. On his arms was no seared flesh, no blistering trace of that magic fire. He combed his fingers through his beard, and found it full and long, uncrisped by the singeing of the flames. Even the smell of heat was gone, and there was only the staling odor of blood and the sweat of his body.

The sound of soft, mocking laughter whirled him about so that his deep-sunk feet tripped him and, almost, he fell. There glittered in the air before him a swirling rainbow arch of colors, the seven colors of the seven wizards. As he stared, frowning his doubts, the thing swirled at him like a sword. Prester John ducked and felt a sharpness like steel graze his scalp! A severed lock of his hair floated toward the sand. Prester John laughed sharply. He tore his feet from the sand in a frantic leap for his abandoned sword and straightened with its glittering curve before him. Now here was a thing a warrior could fight. The rainbow sword swung toward him, and he flung up the guard of his own steel to meet it. There was no sound, but the rainbow swished past his throat and, as he turned heavily to face it, he confronted not one, but two of these streamers of light that had the cutting edge of death itself!

Anger darkened Prester John’s gray eyes. Now here, surely, was doom when a man’s fending sword multiplied his enemies! They swirled like flames, whipped through the air like the veils of a dancing girl, feinting for his throat, striking both together, chopping in swift down-strokes like a Mongol drummer’s sticks. Prester John dodged and ducked and whirled and, only in extremity interposed the flat of his defensive blade. Yet in a half dozen moments there were seven of those flashing swords of light swishing about his ears.

Prester John’s thoughts were a whirl of madness, but somewhere in the depths of his brain an idea began to breathe. No man could fight magic with man-made tools—yet here were magic swords ready to his hand! He need only leap and grab them. The seven blades of light were circling him, quivering almost motionless in the air, lifting for a final downstroke that would slash him in seven different bits to earth. It was now he must strike, if ever. Furiously, Prester John flung his sword from him and with a dragging leap he reached out with both mighty hands for the fragments of colored light. Pain like the gash of a keen dagger knifed across his fingers and into his palms. He clamped his grip more tightly on those two grasped magic weapons and whirled them about his head—and the air about him was empty! He opened his tight-gripping hands and black sand poured through his fingers to the earth.

Prester John stood with hanging arms, and it was weariness that bowed his shoulders, the weariness of battling the unknown, of fighting an enemy that no man’s hands could grasp and winning triumphs that vanished into the thinness of air and a fistful of sand. There was nothing he could strike, and yet he knew with an awful certainty that had his spirit faltered for a moment, he would have died horribly beneath the keen edges of a wand of light. He had met the beasts with savagery that matched their own, and he had met men with guile and the quickness of brain and body, but what could he summon to defeat these spirits of the air?

He sucked in a slow breath and, slowly, too, his head lifted as proudly as of old. There were channels cut in the flesh of his bearded cheeks as if grief and the promise of despair had wielded sharp chisels on his flesh, but somewhere within him a warm spark of courage still glowed. Spirit he still had, and while that spirit burned—He grasped at an idea that eluded his warrior’s brain and, somewhere—it might be as far off as the fir-clad Suntai hills, or as near as the beating of his own heart—muffled drums began to throb and he heard the tinkle of softly clashed cymbals.

Stiffly, on his drained limbs, Prester John turned about and saw that the door in the base of the altar had opened again. From it stepped—
a woman!
 Prester John’s breath caught in his throat at the sight of her beauty, draped in a fluttering of veils like spider webs. Her black hair hung as straight as poured ink; almost, it seemed to stain the rosy marble-whiteness of her flesh. Slowly, as Prester John stared, her feet began to pick up that far thudding of the drums and the graceful willow of her body bent and swayed in a stirring rhythm as old as flesh, as new as young desire. Prester John dragged a war-weary arm across his haggard eyes. Honors they had promised him if he triumphed. Was this, then, part of his victor’s mead? He took a stumbling step forward, and it seemed to him that there was, in all that waiting mob, the tension of a caught breath. He frowned and stopped.

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.”