A jest and a vengeance

by E. Hoffmann Price

The spiraling path was curving in ever narrowing circles, vortex-like.

The perfume was now overwhelming.

At the bottom of the pit he found himself facing a low archway, that opened into a vault pervaded by glowing vapors whose luminescence throbbed to the cadence of those muttering drums and wailing pipes.

Then a gong sounded once: thinly, as the rustle of silk rather than the resonance of bronze; and the rose-hued mists parted, revealing a girl whose Babylonic eyes gazed through and past him as though he were nebulous as the smoke-wisps of gauze that thinly veiled her loveliness.

A numbness crept over the sultan; all save those intent, sultry eyes was blotted out of existence.

Then she spoke. "Welcome, son of the Old Tiger. You have done well. But unaided you can go no farther."

The girl extended her slender arms and with serpentine passes and gestures stroked his forehead; and then, stepping to his left side, with her knuckles she rapped sharply here and there along his spine, making the lost magic of far-off Tibet, whereby men become gods, and gods become beasts.

Then in softly purring syllables she continued, "You can not cross the threshold to enter the presence of the Lord of the World. Try and see whether I am right."

The sultan sought to advance; but his feet were fixed to the tiles, and a heaviness that forbade all movement possessed him.

Again that soft rippling voice: "You have become as immobile as those eleven who were once kings. And with another pass I could weave about you that silence from the ancient mountains, from which you could not emerge until the end of all time...."