Sword Woman and Other Historical Adventures

to see if she obeyed, he stalked away up the street. She hurried after him, clutching her draggled robe about her. She could not walk the streets all night; any officer of the caliph would strike off her head for violating the edict of Al Hakim. This stranger might be leading her into slavery, but she had no choice.

The silence of her companion made her nervous. Several times she essayed speech, but his grim unresponsiveness struck her silent in turn. Her curiosity was piqued, her vanity touched. Never before had she failed so signally to interest a man. Faintly she sensed an imponderable something she could not overcome – an unnatural and frightening aloofness she could not touch. Fear began to grow on her, but she followed because she knew not what else to do. Only once he spoke, when, looking back, she was startled to see several furtive and shadowy forms stealing after them.

“Men follow us!” she exclaimed.

“Heed them not,” he answered in his weird voice. “They are but servants of Allah that serve Him in their way.”

This cryptic answer set her shuddering, and nothing further was said until they reached a small arched gate set in a lofty wall. There the stranger halted and called aloud. He was answered from within, and the gate opened, revealing a black mute holding a torch on high. In its lurid gleam the height of the robed stranger was inhumanly exaggerated.

“But this – this is a gate of the Great Palace!” stammered Zaida.

For answer the man threw back his hood, revealing a long pale oval of a face, in which burned those strange luminous eyes.

Zaida screamed and fell to her knees. “Al Hakim!”

“Aye, Al Hakim, oh faithless and sinful one!” The hollow voice was like a knell. Sonorous and inexorable as the brazen trumpets of doom it rolled out in the night. “Oh, vain and foolish woman, who dare ignore the command of Al Hakim, which is the word of God! Who treads the street in sin, and sets aside the mandates of The Beneficent King! There is no majesty, and there is no might save in Allah, the glorious, the great! Oh, Lord of the Three Worlds, why withhold Thy levin-fire to burn her into a charred and blackened brand for all men to behold and shudder thereat!”

Then changing his tone suddenly, he cried sharply: “Seize her!” and the dogging shadows closed in, revealing themselves as black men with the wizened features of mutes. As their fingers closed on her flesh, Zaida fainted for the first and last time in her life.

She did not feel herself being lifted and carried through the gate, across gardens waving with blossoms and reeking with spice, through corridors lined with spiral columns of alabaster and gold, and into a chamber without windows, the arched doors of which were bolted with bars of gold, gemmed with amethysts.

It was upon the carpeted, cushion strewn floor of this chamber that the Venetian regained consciousness. She looked dazedly about her, then the memory of her adventure came back with a rush, and with a low cry, she stared wildly about for her captor. She shrank down again to see him standing above her, arms folded, head bent gloomily, while his terrible eyes burned into her soul.

“Oh Lion of the Faithful!” she gasped, struggling to her knees. “Mercy! Mercy!”

Even as she spoke she was sickeningly aware of the futility of pleading for mercy where mercy was unknown. She was crouching before the most feared monarch in the world: the man whose name was a curse in the mouths of Christian, Jew and orthodox Moslem alike; the man who, claiming descent from Ali, the nephew of the Prophet, was the head of the Shia world, the Incarnation of Divine Reason to all Shiites; the man who had ordered all dogs killed, all vines cut down, all grapes and honey dumped into the Nile; who had banned all games of chance, confiscated the property of the Coptic Christians and given the people themselves over to abominable tortures; who believed that to disobey one of his commands, however trivial, was the blackest sin conceivable. He roamed the streets at night in disguise, as Haroun ar Raschid had done before him, and as Baibars did after him, to see that his commands were obeyed.

So Al Hakim stared at her with wide unblinking eyes, and Zaida felt her flesh shrivel and crawl in horror.

“Blasphemer!” he whispered. “Tool of Shaitan! Daughter of all evil! Oh Allah!” he cried suddenly, flinging aloft his wide-sleeved arms. “What punishment shall be devised for this demon? What agony terrible enough, what degradation vile enough to render justice? Allah grant me wisdom!”

Zaida rose upon her knees, snatching off her torn veil. She stretched out her arm, pointing at his face.

“Why do you call on Allah?” she shrieked hysterically. “Call on Al Hakim! You are Allah! Al Hakim is God!”

He stopped short at her cry; he reeled, catching at his head, crying out incoherently. Then he straightened himself and looked down at her dazedly. Her face was chalk white, her wide eyes staring. To her natural acting ability was added the real and desperate horror of her position. To Al Hakim it seemed that she was dazed and dazzled by a vision of celestial splendor.

“What do you see, woman?” he gasped.

“Allah has revealed Himself to me!” she whispered. “In your face, shining like the morning sun! Nay, I burn, I die in the blaze of thy glory!”

She sank her face in her hands and crouched trembling. Al Hakim passed a trembling hand over his brow and temples.

“God!” he whispered. “Aye, I am God! I have guessed it – I have dreamed it – I, and I alone possess the wisdom of the Infinite. Now a mortal has seen it, has recognized the god in the form of man. Aye, it is the truth taught by the teachers of the Shia – the Incarnation of the Godhead – I see the Truth behind the truth at last. Not a mere incarnation of divinity – divinity itself! Allah! Al Hakim is Allah!”

Bending his gaze upon the woman at his feet, he ordered: “Rise, woman, and look upon thy god!”

Timidly she did so, and stood shrinking before his unwinking gaze. Zaida the Venetian was not extremely beautiful according to certain arbitrary standards which demand the perfectly chiselled features, the delicate frame – but she was good to look at. She was somewhat broadly built, with big breasts and haunches, and shoulders wider than most. Her face was not the classic of the Greeks, and was faintly freckled. But there was about her a vital something transcending mere superficial beauty. Her brown eyes sparkled, reflecting a keen intelligence, and the physical vigor promised by her thick limbs and big hips.

As he looked at her a change clouded the wide eyes of Al Hakim; he seemed to see her clearly for the first time.

“Thy sin is pardoned,” he intoned. “Thou wert first to hail thy God. Henceforth thou shalt serve me in honor and splendor.”

She prostrated herself, kissing the carpet before his feet, and he clapped his hands. A eunuch entered, bowing low.

“Go quickly to the house of Zahir el Ghazi,” said Al Hakim, seeming to look over the head of the servitor, and see him not at all. “Say to him: ‘This is the word of Al Hakim, who is God; that on the morrow shall be the beginning of happenings, of the building of ships, and the marshalling of hosts, even as thou hast desired; for God is God, and the unbelievers too long have blasphemed against Him!’ ”

“Hearkening and obeying, master,” mumbled the eunuch, bowing to the floor.

“I doubted and feared,” said Al Hakim dreamily, gazing far and beyond the confines of reality into some far realm only he could see. “I knew not – as now I know – that Zahir el Ghazi was the tool of Destiny. When he urged me to world-conquest, I hesitated. But I am God, and to gods all things are possible, yea, all kingdoms and glory!”

III

Glance briefly at the world on that night of portent, 1021 A.D. It was a night in an age of change, an age writhing in the throes of labor in which all that goes to make up the modern world was struggling for birth. It was a world crimson and torn, chaotic and awful, pregnant with imponderable power, yet apparently sinking into stagnation and ruin.