Weird Tales volume 31 number 03 (21 page)

"Ham!"

"Yes," answered Clarke's lips. He had now perfected the trick of having his body act as his proxy.

"Are you taking me to that show tonight?"

"What show?" Clarke the simulacrum stirred lazily in the depths of the cushion-heaped lounge. "The truth of it is, my dear," he resumed after a pause during which some memory of the proposed entertainment must have returned, "truth of it is I'm awfully busy tonight "

"Busy sitting there staring at nothing and sipping Pernod!" flared Diane, the wrath of months flashing forth. Then, as she saw Clarke settle back into the depths: "Listen, once for all; this nonsense has lasted too long. I might as well have married a mummy! Either get that thing out of the house, or I'll leave you to your pious meditations indefinite-ly "

"What? Good Lord, Diane, what's this?"

"You heard me. You used to be half human, but now you're utterly impossible. And if you can't show me a little attention, I'm leaving here and now. For the past many weeks you've acted like a model for a petrified forest. Ever since that yellow beast "

"Yellow beast?"

"Exactly! That damned rug is driving me crazy "

"Is, or has driven?" suggested Clarke.

"Lies there like a beast of prey just ready to wake. And you sit there, night after night, staring at it until you fall asleep in your chair. Does it go, or do I?"

THE GIRL FROM SAMARCAND

375

"What do you want me to do? Throw it away?"

"I don't care what you do with it. Only I won't stay in the house with it. It gives me the creeps. You've said entirely too much in your sleep lately—first yellow rugs, and now it's a yellow girl. I'm through!"

Clarke's brows rose in Saracenic arches. And then he smiled with surprizing friendliness and a touch of wonder.

"Di, why didn't you tell'me sooner? I could understand your craving alligator pears at 3 in the morning—I might have understood that, but hating a rug is really a new one on me "

"No, stupid, it's nothing like that! I just hate the damned thing, and no more to be said."

"Well, lacking the infallible alibi"— Clarke glared and assumed his fighting face—"if you mean I choose between you and the rug, I'll call a taxi right now."

"Don't bother. I'll walk."

The door slammed.

Clarke twisted his mustache, and achieved a laugh; not merry, but still a laugh. And then he sank back among the cushions.

"Yellow Girl, I thought yon were fantastic. . . ."

IE vieux carre wondered when the -/ next morning it was rumored that la belle Vtvandahe had been seen hurrying down Saint Peter Street without speaking to any one of the several acquaintances she had met; but when at the Green Shutter and the Old Quarter Bookstore it was announced that Diane ■was living in a loft of the Pontalba Building, wonder ceased. For Diane's friend Louise had been no less garrulous than she should have been, so that the habitues of the French Quarter were prepared for the news,

And then it was said that to gain admittance to Clarke's studio one must know the code of taps whereby someone who at times left a certain side door bearing bottles of Pernod announced his arrival; for Clarke answered neither doorbell nor telephone. The vendor of Pernod was certainly a discreet person; yet even a discreet seller of absinthe could see no harm in mentioning that his patron found enormous fascination in watching the play of sunlight and the dance of moonbeams on the golden buff pile of a rug that was more a sleeping, breathing creature than any sane child of the loom.

Finally the courier failed to gain admittance, despite his tapping in code. And this he thought worthy of Diane's ear.

' 'He starves himself, petite —since three days now he has not admitted me. All the while she lies there, gleaming in the moon, that awful rug— mordleu, it is terrible. . . ."

Diane had stedfastly denied that which had been clamoring for recognition. But when this last bit was added to what had gone before, logic gave way, and Diane's fears asserted themselves. That rug was haunted, was bewitched, was bedevilling Clarke; logic or no logic, the fact was plain.

Driven by that monstrous thought, Diane exhumed the little golden keyring and started up Royal Street, determined to cross the barrier before it became impassable. But her determination wavered; and before fitting the well-worn key into the lock, she applied her ear to the keyhole, listened, and heard Clarke's voice.

Diane resisted the temptation to use her key and stage a scene that even in the imperturbable Vieux Carre would be sensational for at least a week. Then her pride conquered, and she achieved a most credible smile of disdain.

WEIRD TALES

"Sly devil, pretending it was a rug lie was so absorbed in. . . ."

And, since it was but an amorous escapade, Diane's unbelievable speculations were replaced by thoughts reasonable enough not to be terrifying.

That very night, Clarke was sitting cross-legged on the floor of his studio, full under the red glow of a tall bronze mosque lamp. Before him, shimmering in the moonlight that streamed in through the French windows, lay the rug from Samarcand, mysterious and golden, with its pale sapphire corner pieces glittering like a distant sea viewed through a cleft between two mountain crests.

All the witchery and ecstasy that had ever been lost in the entire world were reassembled, pulsing in the silken pile which he contemplated. And this was the night, the Night of Power, when Fate stalked through the corridors of the world like a colossus just risen from an age-old throne of granite, resistless and unconquerable. Clarke had spent so many nights and days of staring that it was inevitable that there must be such a night. He saw more than the wonder before him: in place of the marvel woven by deft, forgotten hands, there gleamed en-chantingly as through moon-touched mist a garden in the valley of Zarab-shan.

Then came a faint, oddly accented drumming and piping, music to whose tune dead years reassembled their bones and danced forth from their graves. And their ghosts as they danced exhaled an overwhelming sweetness that made Clarke's brain reel and glow, and his blood surge madly in anticipation of that which he knew must follow.

Then out of the blackness just beyond the range of the ruddy mosque lamp and full into the moonlight that marched slowly across the rug came a slim Yellow Girl, diaphanously garbed and veiled.

Her anklets clicked faintly; and very faint was the tinkle of the pendant that adorned her unusual coiffure.

"All these many days I have sought you, my lord," she began, as she extended her arms in welcome. "But in vain, until tonight, when at last I parted (lie veil and crossed the Border."

Clarke nodded understanding!/, and looked full into her dark, faintly slanted eyes.

"And I have been thinking of you," he began, "ever since someone sent me this rug on which you stand. It is strange how this rug could bridge the gap of twenty years and bring into my very house a glimpse of the valley of Zarab-shan. And stranger yet that you could esecape from your father's house and find me here. Though strangest of all, time-has not touched you, when by all reason you should be old, and leathery, and past forty. . . . Yet you are lovelier now than you were then, by that fountain in a garden near Samarcand."

"It is not strange," contradicted the Yellow Girl, as she pirouetted with dainty feet across the moon-lapped silk. "For you see me now as I was when I wove my soul into this very rug."

Clarke smiled incredulously; which was illogical enough, since, compared with the girl's presence, nothing else should be incredible.

"How can that be, Yellow Girl, seeing that we two met one evening twenty years ago, whereas this rug was woven when the Great Khan sat enthroned in Samarcand and reproved the Persian Hanz for his careless disposal of the Great Khan's favorite cities. This v/as the joy of kings hundreds of years before you and I were born "

"Before the Inst time we were born," corrected the Yellow Girl. "But the first time—at least, the first time that I can (Phase turn to page 376)

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The Girl From Samarcand

(Continued from page 374) recollect—the barred windows of a prince's palace failed to keep you from me. And eunuchs with crescent-bladed simitars likewise failed. But in the end— why must all loveliness have an end?—a bowstring for me, and a sword-stroke for you. ..."

The Yellow Girl shuddered as she stroked her smooth throat with fingers that sought to wipe off the last lingering memory of a cord of hardspun silk.

"And from the first," continued the girl, "I knew what our doom would be. So I started weaving, and completed my task before they suspected us and the bowstring did its work. My soul, my self, being woven cunningly and curiously into silk rich enough to hang on the wall of the khan's palace, waited patiently and wondered whether you and I could have our day again. Thus it was in the beginning "

"Ah . . . now it does come back to me," interrupted Clarke, "as in a dream dimly remembered. How compactly and stifiingly they would wrap me in a bale of silk and carry me past the guards and into your presence. And by what devious routes I would leave you . . . yes, and how painlessly swift is the stroke of a simitar. . . ."

The Yellow Girl shuddered.

"A simitar truly wielded is really nothing, after all," continued Clarke. "I might have been sawn asunder between planks. . . . Well, and that meeting in the garden .these short twenty years ago was after all not our first ... it seems that I knew then that it was not the first. Though but for an evening "

"Yes. Just for an evening. So to what

end were we spared bowstrings and the stroke of swift simitars, since we had but an evening?" And thinking of the empty years of luxurious imprisonment that followed, she smiled somberly. "For only an evening. And then you forgot, until this rug—this same rug I wove centuries ago—interrupted your pleasant adventuring, and reminded you.

"Death stared me in the face. The end of life more vainly lived than the first. I knew that I was leaving this avatar after having lived but one stolen evening. So I sent a trusted servant to carry this very rug to Meshed. For when we met in the garden, you were hunting rugs for him who now seeks them for your delight. And I knew that he would find you if you still lived. Thus it is that I have crossed the Border, and stand before you as I did once before—this time on that wry rug which I wove centuries ago, while living in hope of another meeting and in dread of the bowstring I knew would in the end find mc."

The moon patch had marched toward the end of the rug from Samarcand, and was cutting into the blue web at its end. Clarke knew that when there remained no more room for her tiny feet, she would vanish, not ever to reappear. But Clarke hoped against knowledge.

"Yellow Girl," he entreated, "my door will be barred to friend and acquaintance alike, if you will but return on whatever nights the moon creeps across our rug. , . ."

Had Diane, listening at the door, understood, she would have used her key. But Diane merely heard:

"And I shall wait for these nights as long as life remains in mc. For all that has happened since then is nothing and less than nothing; and all has been a dream since that one night in a garden of Zarab-shan."

Very little remained of the moori

WEIRD TALES

377

patch. The Yellow Girl stepped a tiny pace forward, to prolong her stay yet another few moments. All but the moonlit strip of the tug from Samarcand glowed bloodily in the flare of the brazen mosque lamp.

"No, forgetful lover," eluded the Yellow Girl, "I can not return. I can not cross the Border again. t In Samarcand, eight hundred years ago we mocked for a while the doom that hung over us, and in the end called the bowstring but a caress of farewell. Again, in the garden of Zarab-shan wc met, we parted, and you forgot: so this time I take no diances. While I can not return, you at least can follow me ... if you will . . . for it is very easy. ..."

She edged along the ever narrowing strip of moon-bathed silk, and with an embracing gesture, lured Clarke to rise and follow her.

"It is so easy . . . move lightly . . but be careful not to disturb your body or overbalance it. . . ."

Had Diane not turned away from the door, were she not even now strolling insouciantly clown Royal Street

"Yellow Girl, you and I have had enough of farewells!"

Something left Clarke, tottered perilously on the two handbreadths of moonlight that remained, then caught the Yellow Girl by the hand and took the lead.

The blue web of the rug from Samarcand gleamed for another moment in the moonlight, then sweltered in the red glow of the mosque lamp.

Coming soon —

Goetterdaemmerung

By Seabury Quinn

A strange tale of the future, by the

author of the de Grandin stories

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SEABURY QUINN appears <

in WEIRD TALES <

THE enthusiastic reception of Seabury Quinn's story, Roads, in our January issue, has encouraged us to print further ofT-the-trail stories from time to time in this magazine. This story was a reverent tale of the Crucifixion, a hetaera from the house of Mary of Magdala, and Santa Claus. Though there were a few dissident voices of those who thought the Santa Claus element childish, the chorus of praise made the vote overwhelming in its favor.

Suited to a T

William F. Zuckert, Jr., of Washington, D. C, writes: "After ten years as a silent reader of WT, I take this opportunity to drop a line to the Eyrie. As a whole, I can find little or no criticism against our magazine, because personally it suits me to a T. Besides, on the very rare occasions when I do have an infinitesimal gripe, I say nothing because I realize that there must have been plenty of readers who did enjoy the piece; who am I to yelp? I like the high literary quality of the tales, with that subtle horror that sort of sneaks up on one. Now for a couple of orchids to the authors. In the December issue, I particularly enjoyed The Sea-Witch by Nictzin Dyalhis. In my humble estimation, this yarn constitutes one of the smoothest bits that I've ever read. It didn't hold a dull moment nor an arid paragraph from beginning to end. This letter would be incomplete without a mention of my favorite author and character. I refer, of course, to Seabury Quinn with his inimitable Jules de Grandin—a grand pair whose adventures I hope to be able to follow as long as these old eyes can see the printed page. Flames of Vengeance in the December issue was grand, but when the January issue came out with Roads, I got a real sock! What a story! I was almost on the last page 378

before it dawned on me just who Claudius really was! That idea was a real inspiration, and you gave it to us at exactly the proper time of year. Keep up die good work, Mr. Quinn, and I can personally guarantee you at least one family of very avid readers. I could go on for pages extolling the virtues of the various authors, but that isn't very practical, because perhaps you would like to squeeze in a letter from some other reader. So I close now with a big cheer for Virgil Finlay. And thanks for listening."

The Light Was Green

Richard F. Behm writes from Los Angeles: "Thank you for John Speer's story, The Light Was Green. A long time has passed since I have read any fiction as unusual and fascinating as the stories written by Mr. Speer. It is very evident he does not write until he is definitely sure of the ground from which his inspiration for his story sprung."

A Letter from Miss Hemken

Gertrude Hemken writes from Chicago: "Roads/ This is by far the loveliest Christmas story I have ever read. Quinn couples the Teutonic legends of the Nativity so beautifully. But one thing wonders me—Klaus, after a tricennium, still had the fair hair and beard; yet the Santa Claus we know is a white-haired, white-bearded old fellow. 'Course after two thousand years most anyone would grow gray, but—never mind. Somehow or other I was a mite disappointed in Dorothy Quick this time. Her witch was somehow so very like another enchantress in a w.-k, story by an equally w.-k. author. I really don't care for these supple sirens and their frightening powers. Give me a couple of rip-snorters like Conan and Northwest Smith—brave lassies like Jirel of Joiry.

WEIRD TALES

Finlay's full page is much more to my taste this time. The spires and skyline look so other worldish. Well, guess I'll wait for another installment of The Hairy Ones Shall Dame before I comment—somehow that Devil's Crofc is enticing. Raggh—woof— grrr—I like so very much this Toeja Mai-jan, but I cannot pronounce such words satisfactorily. And so I am riled, in spire of a cat tale—and such a pretty white cat? I have often wondered if a tiger would make a good pet. And so the verriichter A is now a block of ice in the black vastnesses of the void—and thus ends his The Voyage of tlie Nentralia. I found the closing installment rather flat, except for the Venusian centipedes and volcano. Doctor Keller turned out a nice one with his Valley of Bones — such, I believe, is entirely possible in this strange land of Africa. I was pleased to see your reprint of Ethan Brand —I have read it so many times along with others of Haw-thorne's talcs."

Both Lusty and Devout

Manly Wade Wellrm-n writes from New York City: "Let me vote for Quinn's Roads

as the most impressive tiling in the Janua WT. It gives me to think thus: does no) the world of fantasy hold its good powers as well as evil, its saints and angels as well as its fiends and devils? Roads was both lusty and devout, as a good Christmas tale should be."

Finlay Frontispiece

Robert A. Madle writes from Philadelphia: "Thanks exceedingly for inaugurating the new frontispiece department. Both pic-turizations which have appeared have been supreme. Virgil Finlay is unquestionably the modern master of weird art, as H. P. Love-craft was the unquestioned master of weird fiction. Continue this department, and have Finlay illustrate the entire interior of the magazine hereafter. His covers are also superb, but do not neglect Brundage entirely. She is one of the best artists of the decade."

Hep Huts

N. J. O'Neail writes from Toronto his selection of the fifteen best stones in Wmrd Tales for 1937, and comments: "You may notice that five on my list—one diird of the

379

nuary

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total—are reprints; probably not surprizing, since the reprints represent, in theory, and usually in practise, die cream of bygone issues. I shouldn't be surprized if a demand soon arose for a re-reprint section, in which some of the reprints of eight and nine years ago might reappear once more. . . / You began reprinting from back numbers in 1928, when WT was only five years old. Now it has rounded out its fifteenth year; and it might be reasoned diat a story which was worth reprinting once, five years after its first publication, might merit another such honor ten years later."