A Prince of Dreamers Part 48

A nail. And something had caught on it. What?

A tiny sc.r.a.p of fringe. And that was scent--not bewildering scent of roses; but bewildering scent of musk and ambergris--the essences of Satanstown!

Siyah Yamin's paradise!

The thought leaped to her brain; a second or so afterward she stood at the secret door. It was ajar.

But this time the darkness of the roof showed like a black shadow against the diffused radiance from the town below.

"Siyala" she cried, but there was no answer. She moved forward a step; then, bethinking herself, turned back, locked the door and thrust the key in her bosom. If anyone were there, they would have to meet her face to face.

So, her eyes becoming accustomed to that outside radiance, that central shadow, she half-felt her way down the broad path from the door toward the place where, when last she had seen it, silken curtains had still hung, and the remains of feasting had still lain rotting--rotting surely, slowly by day and night.

But there was nothing now. Even the dead roses had disappeared and her feet as she walked sank softly in the carpet of sand and dust that covered all things. Was that a darker shadow flitting back as she advanced? She turned swiftly, heard an ineffectual rattle of the lock, and the next instant, in her haste, her outstretched hands pinned a slight figure to the door.

"Lo! ato," came a petulant voice, "thou art rough as any man! I am here if thou needst me, so take thy big hands from my frail body and let me light a light. 'Twas thy step--manlike again--made me extinguish mine, for fear."

A spark from the tinder box showed small hands shaking; and the following light, a second too soon, found traces of sharp terror behind the mocking smile on Siyah Yamin's face. She was dressed as she had been before in man's clothes, but this time they seemed to sit ill on her shrinking figure; yet she strove hard for boldness.

"Well! what is't, ato?" she went on recklessly as if trying to put off time. "Somewhat of the King I will go bail--the King thou dost not love! ha! ha!" Her jeering laugh roused a m.u.f.fled echo from the low, empty walls.

"Yea, I love the King as woman loves man," replied atma gravely. "What of that. It is illusion. It will pa.s.s."

Siyah Yamin gave a little soft shuddering sigh.

"Come!" she said sharply, "we cannot talk so. Come! widow! follow thy lover, Sher Khan." She sprang forward light in hand, and her slender figure fled forward leaving darkness behind her; darkness through which her light song echoed.

What says philosophy Love's an illusion!

Silly delusion!

Give me your lips Take mine! Such sips Prove Love felicity.

Wisdom is wearisome Closer, my dearie, come Let us find Unity--

"Peace Siyal!" said atma, sternly interrupting the ribald verses.

"Peace? oh yea! let there be peace between us." laughed the courtesan, as she sank down on the dusty step of the dais, and put the light beside her. But her wide eyes belied her light words.

Fear sate behind their glitter, watching wickedly; and every subtle sense sought for some means of escape, some method of cajolery. "Wherefore not," she rattled on. "Lo! I give you in his Monkey-Majesty! He is not a man after my heart. Yet, I would not his enemies got the better of him, as they will do. What! hast not heard?

He challenged them this day to write failure across a promise of his, or change across his mind. From dawn to dawn it was. And see you, ato"

the hurried palpitating voice steadied, as the wild search for some false trail happened upon one. "Thou art the King's Charan and must warn him! They have sent poison out to the paralysed profligate at Shakin-garh--he will be burnt at dawn and with him the girl whose _ram-rucki_ the King wears. There is small time to lose, ato--I know it, I tell thee--I heard it from their lips--go thou, then, with warning."

She leant forward; her face full of guileful, beguileful beauty, close to the grave level brows that met in a steady frown.

"Aye! I will go, Siyal--but not without the King's Luck. Give it me.

Thou hast it in thy bosom--thy hand has hovered there. Give it me, I say." She essayed to grip those fluttering fingers but Siyah Yamin was on her feet in a second, and stood back, swaying unsteadily, one hand clasped to her heart.

"I--lo! it is not true. 'Tis something here that hurts"--she beat her breast sharply. "Be not so rough, ato! Thou wert always rough as a man. Lo! in the old days it was I, little Siyala who was to marry atma Singh, and now--now--Sher Khan." she paused, tore off her dandified turban, and let the great plaits and coils of her hair fall loose.

"See I am woman again, and thou--thou art man! And, ato, hist! Knowest thou why I came back here to-night?--would I had never come. It was to find the broken pieces of the gla.s.s goblet I broke." Her small face melted almost to tears, the babyish lips trembled over the words.

"Yea! Yea! it is true. I came for them!--I was going away--for ever--and I remembered. Lo! ato, a woman always remembers her first lover, even if she be courtezan. Yea! thou wilt remember the King, so have pity! What! dost not believe? Lo! I was looking when thou camest, and frightened me into putting out the light. See here if I lie." With her right hand she tore something out of her bosom and shifting it swiftly to her left held it out. It was a curved fragment of the blown-gla.s.s goblet which had fallen with a crash upon a rosebush, whose red wine of Shiraz had trickled thirstily to the rose's root.

Twined upon it in golden tracery lay part of its legend--

Take the cup of Life with laughing lip, Forget the bleeding heart within.

She caught at the words hysterically. "So have I taken Life, ato, as all women should; I have drunken heart's blood. ato! touch me not! or before G.o.d I---- What dost seek, madwoman?

"The King's Luck, harlot! Thou hast it in thy bosom. Give it me, or----"

They were locked in each other's arms, but atma Devi was a second too late, for Siyah Yamin had drawn something besides a broken gla.s.s-sherd from her bosom, and her right hand with a flash of steel in it rose high, then fell on the Charan's broad breast. atma staggered under the blow, but the poniard blade crashing on the collar bone turned aside upward and cleft the muscles of the neck harmlessly. She had the weapon wrested from the small hand in a second, and her voice, breathless from exertion yet steady, went on relentlessly.

"Thou hast it, Siyal! Thou didst steal it and betray--all men! Best give it to me--or--or I shall have to kill thee--sister of the veil."

But Siyah Yamin was true to her womanhood, and every atom of her fought for full possession as she struggled madly.

"It--it is mine." she gasped. "No one shall have it--I claim--I am the woman and I will have----"

Suddenly there was silence. Resistance melted out of atma Devi's arms; her insistent hand, still seeking, found what it sought. She gave a sharp cry of joy and relaxed her hold.

But the dainty figure her insistence had supported, doubled up limply and fell in a huddled heap upon the ground.

She sank beside it on her knees. She would have killed it, as she had said. Aye, killed it remorselessly! but surely she had not----

"Siyal? Siyala? Sister?"

But she called in vain. The very glare of hatred and fear was dying from the eyes over which the impenetrable veil of death was creeping.

She watched them for a second or two, then closed them, and stood up.

She was not frightened nor remorseful at what had happened. Vaguely she felt relieved. It was womanhood which had died there on the roof in the Paradise of l.u.s.t. Now that she had time to think, she saw it all. It was so simple. Siyala, beset by the desire of possession, had ordered the false gem maker to make two false stones, and palming them off on the conspirators had kept the real one, trusting to her luck that the one supposed to be the true gem would never again fall into the hands of the jeweller. But it had. The exchange of turbans had brought discovery close at hand, so she had meant to fly; and doubtless for once had spoken truly, when she said she had returned during the night to gather up the broken fragments of her first cup of joy.

So, quietly, methodically, atma straightened out the huddled figure that had held the _deva-dasi_, sister of the veil, daughter of the G.o.ds, covering it decorously with the tinselled muslin scarf Sher Khan had worn in gay mockery of his s.e.x. So it was pure Womanhood that lay there with face upturned to the dark. Then taking the light, atma searched under the rose-bushes for the broken cup. She found the bowl intact save for the one curved splinter Siyala had gathered up. The stem, too, jarred and chipped, would still stand upright; so, making a little pile of dust she set them together beside the dead woman's hand, and left her lying there in the shadow, with the diffused light from the Lamps of the Dead below making a far-away halo to that central darkness.

Closing, and locking the door, she flung the key through a narrow loophole in the stairway, through which that same radiance of the Dead could be seen faintly; so pa.s.sed down to her own door.

There was much to be done. The diamond, however, being so far safe, her first care must be to warn the King that the little coward of the _ram-rucki_ was in imminent danger. For this she must make her way to the palace.

She made it quicker than she had thought for, since, as she unlocked her door, figures started out on her from the darkness below, and she felt what the Beneficent Ladies called an "all-over dress," being respectfully yet firmly pulled over her.

"By the King's command, bibi," said the oily voice of a eunuch. "Thou hast been appointed of his household, and the Lord Chamberlain hath ordered us----"

She made no effort at escape, knowing herself helpless, but she could defend herself.

"The Lord Chamberlain, being here himself," she interrupted at a venture--and a faint stirring as if those around her turned to look at someone told her that her surmise was correct--"can take me prisoner if he choose; but let him remember that the King desires my presence as Charan at the Great Durbar. So let him treat me ill at his peril."

Mirza Ibrahim who had, indeed, come to see his orders executed, said nothing; but he inwardly swore that the jade should repent her defiance. There were endless possibilities for a Lord Chamberlain once the wild-cat were fairly housed within reach.

atma meanwhile in her screened dhooli felt herself going palaceward contentedly enough. So far was good. But how to get her message conveyed to the King.