The Slayer of Souls | Page 3

twenty-four hours. And in that space of time her agonised

soul had touched all depths.
But now as the Golden Gate loomed up in the morning light, rage,
terror, despair had burned themselves out. From their ashes within her
mind arose the cool wrath of desperation armed for anything, wary,
alert, passionately determined to survive at whatever cost, recklessly
ready to fight for bodily existence.
That was her sole instinct now, to go on living, to survive, no matter at
what price. And if were indeed true that her soul had been slain, she
defied its murderers to slay her body also.
That night, at her hotel in San Francisco, she double-locked her door
and lay down without undressing, leaving all lights burning and an
automatic pistol underneath her pillow.
Toward morning she fell asleep, slept for an hour, started up in awful
fear. And saw the double-locked door opposite the foot of her bed
slowly opening of its own accord.
Into the brightly illuminated room stepped a graceful young man in full
evening dress carrying over his left arm an overcoat, and in his other
hand a top hat and silver tipped walking-stick.
With one bound the girl swung herself from the bed to the carpet and
clutched at the pistol under her pillow.
"Sanang!" she cried in a terrible voice.
"Keuke Mongol!" he said, smilingly.
For a moment they confronted each other in the brightly lighted
bedroom, then, partly turning, he cast a calm glance at the open door
behind him; and, as though moved by a wind, the door slowly closed.
And she heard the key turn of itself in the lock, and saw the bolt slide
smoothly into place again.
Her power of speech came back to her presently--only a broken

whisper at first: "Do you think I am afraid of your accursed magic?"
she managed to gasp. "Do you think I am afraid of you, Sanang?"
"You are afraid," he said serenely.
"You lie!"
"No, I do not lie. To one another the Yezidees never lie!"
"You lie again, assassin! I am no Yezidee!"
He smiled gently. His features were pleasing, smooth, and regular; his
cheek-bones high, his skin fine and of a pale and delicate ivory colour.
Once his black, beautifully shaped eyes wandered to the levelled pistol
which she now held clutched desperately close to her right hip, and a
slightly ironical expression veiled his gaze for an instant.
"Bullets?" he murmured. "But you and I are of the Hassanis."
"The third lie, Sanang!" Her voice had regained its strength. Tense,
alert, blue eyes ablaze, every faculty concentrated on the terrible
business before her, the girl now seemed like some supple leopardess
poised on the swift verge of murder.
"Tokhta!"* She spat the word. "Any movement toward a hidden
weapon, any gesture suggesting recourse to magic--and I kill you,
Sanang, exactly where you stand!"
[[*note: "look out!" Nomad-Mongol dialect]]
"With a pistol?" He laughed. Then his smooth features altered subtly.
He said: "Keuke Mongol, who call yourself Tressa
Norne,--Keuke--heavenly azure-blue,--named so in the temple because
of the colour of your eyes--listen attentively, for this is the Yarlig
which I bring to you by word of mouth from Yian, as from Yezidee to
Yezidee:
"Here, in this land called the United States of America, the Temple girl,
Keuke Mongol, who has witnessed the mysteries of Erlik and who

understands the magic of the Sheiks-el-Djebel, and who has seen
Mount Alamout and the eight castles and the fifty thousand Hassanis in
white turbans and in robes of white;--you--Azure-blue eyes--heed the
Yarlig!--or may thirty thousand calamities overtake you!"
There was a dead silence; then he went on seriously: "It is decreed:
You shall cease to remember that you are a Yezidee, that you are of the
Hassanis, that you ever have laid eyes on Yian the Beautiful, that you
ever set naked foot upon Mount Alamout. It is decreed that you
remember nothing of what you have seen and heard, of what has been
told and taught during the last four years reckoned as the Christians
reckon from our Year of the Bull. Otherwise--my Master sends you this
for your--convenience."
Leisurely, from under his folded overcoat, the young man produced a
roll of white cloth and dropped it at her feet and the girl shrank aside,
shuddering, knowing that the roll of white cloth was meant for her
winding-sheet.
Then the colour came back to lip and cheek; and, glancing up from the
soft white shroud, she smiled at the young man: "Have you ended your
Oriental mummery?" she asked calmly. "Listen very seriously in your
turn, Sanang, Sheik-el-Djebel, Prince of the Hassanis who, God knows
when and how, have come out into the sunshine of this clean and
decent country, out of a filthy darkness where devils and