Part 51 (1/2)

Bending nearer, the girl fixed her yellow eyes on the man who looked back at her with dying gaze, sitting upright and knee deep in his shroud.

Then, noiselessly she uncoiled her supple golden body, extending her right arm toward the knife.

”Throw back thy head, my lord, and stretch thy throat to the knife's sweet edge,” she whispered caressingly. ”No!--do not close your eyes.

Look upon me. Look into my eyes. I am Aoula, temple girl of the Baroula.s.s! I am mistress to the Slayer of Souls! I am a golden plaything to Sanang Noane, Prince of the Yezidees. Look upon me attentively, my lord!”

Her smooth little hand closed on the hilt; the scarlet fish splashed furiously in the bowl, dislodging a blossom or two which fell to the carpet and slowly faded into mist.

Now she grasped the knife, and she slipped from the bed to the floor and stood before the dazed man.

”This is the Namaz-Ga,” she said in her silky voice. ”Behold, this is the appointed Place of Prayer. Gaze around you, my lord. These are the shadows of mighty men who come here to see you die in the Place of Prayer.”

Cleves's head had fallen back, but his eyes were open. The Baroula.s.s girl took his head in both hands and turned it hither and thither. And his glazing eyes seemed to sweep a throng of shadowy white-robed men crowding the room. And he saw the bloodless, symmetrical visage of Sanang among them, and the great red beard of Togrul; and his stiffening lips parted in an uttered cry, and sagged open, flaccid and soundless.

The Baroula.s.s sorceress lifted the shroud from his knees and spread it on the carpet, moving with leisurely grace about her business and softly intoning the Prayers for the Dead.

Then, having made her arrangements, she took her knife into her right hand again and came back to the half-conscious man, and stood close in front of him, bending near and looking curiously into his dimmed eyes.

”Ayah!” she said smilingly. ”This is the Place of Prayer. And you shall add your prayer to ours before I use my knife. So! I give you back your power of speech. p.r.o.nounce the name of Erlik!”

Very slowly his dry lips moved and his dry tongue trembled. The word they formed was,

”Tressa!”

Instantly the girl's yellow eyes grew incandescent and her lovely mouth became distorted. With her left hand she caught his chin, forced his head back, exposing his throat, and using all her strength drew the knife's edge across it.

But it was only her clenched fingers that swept the taut throat--clenched and empty fingers in which the knife had vanished.

And when the Baroula.s.s girl saw that her clenched hand was empty, felt her own pointed nails cutting into the tender flesh of her own palm, she stared at her blood-stained fingers in sudden terror--stared, spread them, shrieked where she stood, and writhed there trembling and screaming as though gripped in an invisible trap.

But she fell silent when the door of the room opened noiselessly behind her;--and it was as though she dared not turn her head to face the end of all things which had entered the room and was drawing nearer in utter silence.

Suddenly she saw its shadow on the wall; and her voice burst from her lips in a last shuddering scream.

Then the end came slowly, without a sound, and she sank at the knees, gently, to a kneeling posture, then backward, extending her supple golden shape across the shroud; and lay there limp as a dead snake.

Tressa went to the bowl of water and drew from it every blossom. The scarlet fish was now thras.h.i.+ng the water to an iridescent spume; and Tressa plunged in her hands and seized it and flung it out--squirming and wheezing crimson foam--on the shroud beside the golden girl of the Baroula.s.s. Then, very slowly, she drew the shroud over the dying things; stepped back to the chair where her husband lay unconscious; knelt down beside him and took his head on her shoulder, gazing, all the while, at the outline of the dead girl under the snowy shroud.

After a long while Cleves stirred and opened his eyes. Presently he turned his head sideways on her shoulder.

”Tressa,” he whispered.

”Hush,” she whispered, ”all is well now.” But she did not move her eyes from the shroud, which now outlined the still shapes of _two_ human figures.

”John Recklow!” she called in a low voice.

Recklow entered noiselessly with drawn pistol. She motioned to him; he bent and lifted the edge of the shroud, cautiously. A bushy red beard protruded.