The Slayer Of souls Part 44

"What is their purpose?" asked Cleves harshly. "What do these Mongol Sorcerers expect to gain by making little live things out of lumps of garden dirt?"

"They are testing their power," whispered the girl.

"Like tuning up a huge machine?" muttered Selden.

"Yes."

"For what purpose?"

"To make larger living creatures out of--of clay."

"They can't--they can't _create_!" exclaimed Cleves. "I don't know how--by what filthy tricks--they make rats out of dirt. But they can't make a--anything--like a--like a man!"

Tressa's body trembled slightly.

"Once," she said, "in the temple, Prince Sanang took dust which was brought in sacks of goat-skin, and fashioned the heap of dirt with his hands, so that it resembled the body of a man lying there on the marble floor under the shrine of Erlik.... And--and then, there in the shadows where only the Dark Star burned--that black lamp which is called the Dark Star--the long heap of dust lying there on the marble pavement began to--to _breathe_!--"

She pressed both hands over her breast as though to control her trembling body: "I saw it; I saw the long shape of dust begin to breathe, to stir, move, and slowly lift itself----"

"A Yezidee trick!" gasped Cleves; but he also was trembling now.

"G.o.d!" whispered the girl. "Allah alone knows--the Merciful, the Long Suffering--He knows what it was that we temple girls saw there--that Yulun saw--that Sa-n'sa and I beheld there rising up like a man from the marble floor--and standing erect in the shadowy twilight of the Dark Star...."

Her hands gripped at her breast; her face was deathly.

"Then," she said, "I saw Prince Sanang draw his sabre of Indian steel, and he struck ... once only.... And a dead man fell down where the _thing_ had stood. And all the marble was flooded with scarlet blood."

"A trick," repeated Cleves, in the ghost of his own voice. But his gaze grew vacant.

Presently Selden spoke in tones that sounded weakly querulous from emotional reaction:

"There is a path--a tunnel under the matted briers. It took me more than a week to cut it out. It is possible to reach Fool's Acre. We can try--with our rifles--if you say so, Mrs. Cleves."

The girl looked up. A little colour came into her cheeks. She shook her head.

"Their bodies may not be there in the garden," she said absently. "What you saw may not have been that part of them--the material which dies by knife or bullet.... And it is necessary that these Yezidees should die."

"Can you do anything?" asked Cleves, hoa.r.s.ely.

She looked at her husband; tried to smile:

"I must try.... I think we had better not lose any time--if Mr. Selden will lead us."

"Now?"

"Yes, we had better go, I think," said the girl. Her smile still remained stamped on her lips, but her eyes seemed preoccupied as though following the movements of something remote that was pa.s.sing across the far horizon.

CHAPTER XIV

A DEATH TRAIL

The way to Fool's Acre was under a tangled canopy of thorns, under rotting windfalls of grey mirch, through tunnel after tunnel of fallen debris woven solidly by millions of strands of tough cat-briers which cut the flesh like barbed wire.

There was blood on Tressa, where her flannel shirt had been pierced in a score of places. Cleves and Selden had been painfully slashed.

Silent, thread-like streams flowed darkling under the tangled ma.s.s that roofed them. Sometimes they could move upright; more often they were bent double; and there were long stretches where they had to creep forward on hands and knees through spa.r.s.e wild gra.s.ses, soft, rotten soil, or paths of sphagnum which cooled their feverish skin in velvety, icy depths.

At noon they rested and ate, lying p.r.o.ne under the matted roof of their tunnel.

Cleves and Selden had their rifles. Tressa lay like a slender boy, her brier-torn hands empty.

And, as she lay there, her husband made a sponge of a handful of sphagnum moss, and bathed her face and her arms, cleansing the dried blood from the skin, while the girl looked up at him out of grave, inscrutable eyes.

The sun hung low over the wilderness when they came to the woods of Fool's Acre. They crept cautiously out of the briers, among ferns and open spots carpeted with pine needles and dead leaves which were beginning to burn ruddy gold under the level rays of the sun.

Lying flat behind an enormous oak, they remained listening for a while.

Selden pointed through the woods, eastward, whispering that the house stood there not far away.

"Don't you think we might risk the chance and use our rifles?" asked Cleves in a low voice.

"No. It is the Tchor-Dagh that confronts us. I wish to talk to Sansa,"

she murmured.

A moment later Selden touched her arm.

"My G.o.d," he breathed, "who is that!"

"It is Sansa," said Tressa calmly, and sat up among the ferns. And the next instant Sansa stepped daintily out of the red sunlight and seated herself among them without a sound.

n.o.body spoke. The newcomer glanced at Selden, smiled slightly, blushed, then caught a glimpse of Cleves where he lay in the brake, and a mischievous glimmer came into her slanting eyes.

"Did I not tell my lord truths?" she inquired in a demure whisper. "As surely as the sun is a dragon, and the flaming pearl burns between his claws, so surely burns the soul of Heart of Flame between thy guarding hands. There are as many words as there are demons, my lord, but it is written that _Niaz_ is the greatest of all words save only the name of G.o.d."

She laughed without any sound, sweetly malicious where she sat among the ferns.

"Heart of Flame," she said to Tressa, "you called me and I _made the effort_."

"Darling," said Tressa in her thrilling voice, "the Yezidees are making living things out of dust,--as Sanang Noane made that thing in the Temple.... And slew it before our eyes."

"The Tchor-Dagh," said Sansa calmly.

"The Tchor-Dagh," whispered Tressa.