The Eye of Istar: A Romance of the Land of No Return. Le Queux William
of Sabo-n-Gari, my strange awakening, and the vision of incomparable beauty that had risen before my wondering, fevered eyes, all recurred to me in hazy indistinctness, like some weird, half-remembered dream. But the pale, anxious face of Azala, who had fought so hard to save me falling into the merciless clutches of my pitiless captors, came before me – vivid, distinct, entrancing. Her every feature was engraven indelibly upon my memory, and her voice seemed to repeat in soft, musical Arabic those strange, mysterious words that had thrilled and entranced me.
She trusted me, she had said. Would she, I wondered, be successful in releasing me from this horribly maddening captivity? That she would use every endeavour of which she was capable I was confident; nevertheless, I knew well the enormity of my crime, and feared that even her earnest words would not soften the flint heart of the relentless Sultan ’Othman, whose every whim was law within his own extensive kingdom.
Well I knew the manner of living of this dreaded ruler of the Western Soudan. He formed the etiquette of his brilliant court upon that of the Khalifa’s, keeping himself strictly invisible to the vulgar gaze. He seldom exposed himself to perish of the evil eye. It was he who compelled the women throughout his empire to lead the life of the Eastern harem, and forbade that any (married or single) should show themselves unveiled, making his own family set the example. People approaching the Sultan in audience covered their heads with dust: he never spoke directly to assemblies nor to the people, but always dealt with them through the medium of a herald. Upon the occasions of his going out, his cortège was preceded by musicians, drums, and trumpets, and he rode in solitary state, with his suite at a respectable distance behind. Servants marched surrounding his horse, and holding by turns to his saddle; they were called foot companions, and their headman was the “master of the road.” Only one drum was allowed to precede them, and musicians kept silent when in sight of a town in which the Sultan was residing.
She had spoken of strange marvels, of hidden mysteries that require elucidation, of perils, and of her own misery. Why had unhappiness consumed her? Why, indeed, had she concealed so much from me? For hours I pondered over the veiled words she had uttered, seeking in them some explanation, but finding none.
Then I remembered the hideous blemish upon her fair breast – that mystic mark exactly identical with mine. What, I wondered, could these entwined asps denote? The words of my dead mother rang in my ears: “Seek not to discover its significance until thou meetest with its exact counterpart. Then strive night and day to learn the truth, for, if thou canst elucidate the mystery, thine ears will listen unto strange things, and thine eyes behold wondrous marvels.”
Upon the breast of Azala, the Princess, I had discovered that which I had sought throughout my eventful life, yet even in that moment evil fortune had befallen me, and now, instead of being free to strive towards solving the enigma, I was held captive in that dismal, evil-smelling dungeon, under sentence of death.
Days dragged by – dull, dismal, dispiriting. Suffering the anguish of separation and lost happiness, my whole life seemed wounded. In the dark, damp cell, surrounded by a thousand horrors, oppressed by a thousand vague regrets and bitter thoughts, I awaited the end. Indeed, as the long hours slowly passed, it surprised me that my captors did not drag me forth to die. Once a day three negro guards, heavily armed, appeared and cast to us a little dodowa, or kind of cake made of vegetables, with as little ceremony as if they were giving food to dogs, while a slave filled our earthen vessel with water; but we had no exercise, and were compelled to remain behind our bars like animals entrapped.
My cell had been occupied quite recently by some poor wretch, who, according to the story of a half-starved Arab in captivity near me, had died of fever only a few days before my arrival, and with whom the serpent who made his abode there had apparently been on friendly terms. At first both the reptile and myself were consumed by a mutual fear of one another, but on close acquaintanceship he grew to regard me as harmless, and really performed me a service by clearing the mice and other vermin from my narrow, suffocating den.
Once a loud, piercing shriek escaped one of my half-demented fellow captives, who declared he had been bitten by a scorpion, and, to my dismay, the same reptile found its way through the bars of my cell some hours later, but fortunately I detected it in time, driving it out before it could attack me. Hour by hour, day by day, I crouched, disconsolate and despairing, in the almost impenetrable gloom. Accustomed as I was to the wild life of the plains, confinement amid such loathsome surroundings was doubly irksome and nauseating.
In that Stygian darkness day was like night, and I could keep no count of time; but with the harsh gibberings of idiots always grating on my ears, I grew apprehensive that ere long I, too, must become demented. My respite from death I attributed to the intervention of the fair woman whose wondrous beauty had enmeshed me, and whose words of mystery had aroused in me an intense, unconquerable desire to solve the one great enigma of my life.
Yet as time went on and relief came not, I began to fear that the eunuch had spoken the truth when he informed Azala of the Sultan’s absence, and that, fearing to order me to execution, Khazneh had resolved that I should be driven to madness in that foul, foetid dungeon, where so many captives had pined and died. Many times I had heard how the great Sultan ’Othman was ruled almost entirely by harem influence; how the bright-eyed, imperious Sultana of to-day might be a mangled corpse torn to pieces by the yelping jackals at the city gate to-morrow; how a single word whispered by a dark-haired houri into the ear of her lord might either cause a courtier’s head to fall, or secure for some menial an exalted office of power, with many slaves and fat emoluments. Indeed, it was notorious throughout the Soudan that in the great Fada of the Sultan of Sokoto none was safe. Wives, courtiers, guards, eunuchs, slaves, all trembled, fearing to arouse the anger of the brutal autocrat, for well were they aware that the keen doka of the black executioner was kept ever busy, and none knew whose head next might fall. Black plots and dastardly intrigues were constantly at work within the great Courts of the Harem. The favourite, one day loaded with costly jewels, basking in the smiles of her august master, radiant upon her divan and ruler of the gilded Courts of Enchantment, would assuredly sooner or later fall a victim to the jealousy of her less fortunate sisters, and be compelled to wash the feet of the bright-eyed slave her whilom handmaiden, become the wife of some common soldier, or drink the fatal draught from the golden Cup of Death.
Yet amid such surroundings, continually witnessing the complicated plots and counter-plots engendered by the fiercest feminine hatred, with unceremonious strangling, poisoning or decapitation as the inevitable result, lived Azala, pure as the jasmine-flower, bright as the sunrise on the Great Desert, graceful as the rose bending beneath the evening zephyr, a maiden of absolutely incomparable countenance and entrancing loveliness.
For nearly a whole moon had I remained in my foul, dank kennel, when one morning four gaudily-attired Janissaries released me, and, without deigning to reply to my eager questions, conducted me out of the dungeon and up the worn and broken flight of stairs to the blessed light of day. So long had I been in darkness that the sun’s glare blinded me, and keenly apprehensive that Azala’s efforts had been unavailing, and that I was at last being led to execution, I walked on between my guards, inert, dejected and despairing.
A dozen Janissaries, each armed with gleaming scimitar and jambiyah, joined us, as across one great open courtyard after another was I conducted in procession solemn and funereal. The magnitude and magnificence of those squares, with great plashing fountains, tall palms and colonnades of dead-white horse-shoe arches, astounded me. Evidently they were the outer courts of the palace, for at each gate there stood Janissaries in uniforms of blue and gold, with drawn swords, erect, silent, statuesque. Leaving the Courts of Love, the innermost centre of the great Fada, we crossed the Court of the Grand Vizier, the Court of the Gado (Lord of the Treasury), the Court of the Eunuchs, the Court of the Janissaries, the Court of the Armourers and many others, each larger and more massive in construction, until at length we came to the great, arched outer gate, the only entrance to this sumptuous and gigantic dwelling-place of one of the most powerful potentates of Al-Islâm. Here my heart sank within me, for awaiting us was the executioner, a big, brutal negro, who carried over his shoulder his great doka, or keen, curved sword, that had smote off so many heads of men and women.
Instinctively I knew my fate. I was being conducted to the Kaboga, or place of execution, there to die.
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