The Eye of Istar Part 3

"No," I answered, and at the same moment remembering that the Khalifa's troops numbered many thousands, and that it was scarcely likely that they would be turned aside in their onward march by a few squadrons of the Sultan of Sokoto, I asked,--

"Have the hors.e.m.e.n of the Black Standard been routed?"

"I know not. Yesterday I overheard the messengers delivering their report to the Sultan in the Hall of Audience," she replied.

"But if they are still advancing! Think what terrible fate awaiteth thee if the soldiers of the Khalifa loot this thy beautiful palace, and spread death and desolation through thy city with fire and sword!"

"Arrangements have already been made for my secret escape. In case of danger I shall a.s.sume thy garments, arms and s.h.i.+eld, which I have preserved, and pa.s.s as a Dervish."

"Excellent," I said, laughing at her ingenuity. "But let us hope that my comrades will never gain these walls. If they do, it will, alas! be an evil day for Kano."

"The detection and slaughter of thy scouts placed our army upon its guard," she said. "Already the defences of our city have been strengthened, and every man is under arms. If the Dervishes attack us, of a verity will they meet with an opposition long and strenuous, for by our fighting men the walls of Kano are believed to be impregnable.

See!" she added, drawing aside a portion of the silken hangings close to her, and disclosing a small window covered with a quaintly-worked wooden lattice. "Yonder our men are watching. Our princ.i.p.al city gate, the Kofa-n-Dakaina, is strongly guarded by night and day."

CHAPTER FOUR.

THE MARK OF THE ASPS.

Stepping to the window, I found that the apartment in which we stood was evidently situated in a tower of the palace--which I had heard was built high on Mount Dala--for the great city, with its white, flat-roofed houses and cupolas, and minarets of mosques, lay stretched beneath us.

At the ma.s.sive gate, in the high frowning walls which surrounded the extensive and wealthy capital of the Empire of Sokoto, the far-famed _entrepot_ of Central Africa, soldiers, attired in bright uniforms of blue and gold, swarmed like flies, while cannon bristled on the walls, and everywhere spears and arms glittered in the sun. She pointed out the Jakara, a wide, deep lake, the great Slave Market crowded with buyers, sellers and human merchandise, the Palace of Ghaladima and the Kofa Mazuger. The city was agog, for the hum of life rose from its crowded streets and busy market-places, mingling now and then with the ominous roll of the war-drums, the tw.a.n.ging of _ginkris_, the clas.h.i.+ng of cymbals, and the shouts of the eager, ever-watchful troops. By the cloudless, milk-white sky I knew it was about noon, and the sun directly overhead poured down mercilessly upon the immense sandy plain which stretched away eastward and northward until it was lost in the misty haze of the distant horizon. Date palms rose in small cl.u.s.ters near the ornamental lake in the centre of the city; in the square spreading _alleluba-trees_ cast their welcome shade, and beautiful _gotuias_ unfolded their large, featherlike leaves above slender and undivided stems, but beyond the city walls there was not a tree, not a blade of gra.s.s, not a living thing. Out there all was sun, sand and silence.

"Dost thou reside here always?" I asked, as together we gazed down upon the great white city.

"Yes. Seldom are we in Sokoto itself, for of later years its prosperity hath declined, and the palace is of meagre proportions; indeed, it is now half ruined and almost deserted. The wealth and industry of the empire is centred here in Kano, for our trade extendeth as far north as Mourkouk, Ghat, and even Tripoli; to the west, not only to Timbuktu, but even to the sh.o.r.es of the great sea; to the east, all over Bornu; and to the south, among the Igbira, the Igbo, and among the pagans and ivory hunters of the Congo."

"True," I said, gazing round upon the prosperous capital of one of the most interesting empires in the world. "It is scarcely surprising that my ambitious lord, the Khalifa, should desire to annex the land of the Sultan 'Othman. Even our own cities of Omdurman or Khartoum are not of such extent. How many persons inhabit this, thy palace?"

"In this, the Great Fada, nearly three thousand men and women reside.

In the harem alone are four hundred women and six hundred slaves and eunuchs, while the Imperial bodyguard numbers nearly a thousand."

Glancing below, I saw the palace was enclosed by white walls as high and strong as the outer fortifications. It was built within the great Kasba or fortress, a veritable city within a city.

Turning, our eyes met, and pointing to the distant, sun-baked wilderness, I exclaimed,--

"Away there, the vultures would already have stripped my bones hadst thou not taken compa.s.sion upon me."

"Speak not again of that," she answered. "Thou wert the only man in whose body the spark of life still burned. It was my duty to rescue thee," she replied, rather evasively.

"Now that we understand and trust each other, now indeed, that we are friends true and faithful, wilt thou not tell me why thou didst convey me hither unto thine apartment?"

She hesitated, gazing away towards the misty line where sky and desert joined, until suddenly she turned, and looking boldly into my face with her clear, trusting eyes, answered,--

"It was in consequence of something that was revealed."

"By whom?"

"By thee."

"What revelation have I made?" I asked, sorely puzzled.

She held her breath, her fingers twitched with nervous excitement, and the colour left her cheeks. She seemed striving to preserve some strange secret, yet, at the same time, half inclined to render me the explanation I sought.

"The astounding truth became unveiled unconsciously," she said.

"My mind faileth to follow the meanderings of thy words," I said. "What truth?"

"Behold!" she cried, and hitching the slim fingers of both her hands in the bodice of cream flimsy silk she wore beneath her zouave, she tore it asunder disclosing, not without a blush of modesty, her white chest.

"Behold!" she cried, hoa.r.s.ely. "What dost thou recognise?"

With both her hands she held the torn garment apart, and, as she did so, my eyes became riveted in abject amazement. Bending, I examined it closely, a.s.suring myself that I was not dreaming.

"Hast thou never seen its counterpart?" she asked, panting breathlessly.

"Yea," I answered, with bated breath. "Of a verity the coincidence astoundeth me."

The sight caused me to marvel greatly; I was bewildered, for it conjured up a thought that was horrible. In the exact centre of her delicate chest, immediately above her heaving bosom, was a strange, dark red mark of curious shape, deeply branded into the white flesh, as if at some time or other it had been seared by a red-hot iron. The paleness of the flesh and the firm contour of her bosom rendered the indelible mark the more hideous, but its position and its shape dumbfounded me. The strange blemish const.i.tuted an inexplicable mystery.

It was unaccountable, incredible. I stood agape, staring at it with wide-open, wondering eyes, convinced that its discovery was precursory of revelations startling and undreamed of.

The mark, about the length of the little finger, and perfectly defined, was shaped to represent two serpents with heads facing each other, their writhing bodies intertwined in double curves.

In itself this mystic brand was hideous enough, but to me it had a significance deeper and more amazing, for in the centre of my own chest I bore a mark exactly identical in every detail!

For years; nay, ever since I had known myself, the red scar, not so noticeable upon my brown, sun-tanned skin as upon Azala's pale, delicate breast, had been one of the mysteries of my life. Vividly I remembered how, in my early youth, in far El-Manaa I had sought an explanation of my parents, but they would never vouchsafe any satisfactory reply. On what occasion, or for what purpose the mysterious brand had been placed upon me I knew not. Vaguely I believed that it had been impressed as a means of identification at my birth, and until this moment had been fully convinced that I alone bore the strangely-shaped device. Judge, then, my abject astonishment to find a similar mark, evidently impressed by the identical seal, upon the breast of the woman who had thus exerted her ingenuity to save my life--the woman whose grace and marvellous beauty had captivated me, the woman who had admitted that she reciprocated my affection.

In that brief moment I remembered well the strange, ambiguous reply that my mother had given me when, as a lad, my natural curiosity had been aroused,--

"Sufficient for thee to know that the Mark of the Asps is upon thee, O my son. 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 to strange things, and thine eyes will behold wondrous and undreamed-of marvels."

Since then, twenty long years had elapsed, and I had wandered far and near, in England, in France, in Algeria and across the Great Desert.

Both my parents had died with the strange secret still locked in their hearts, for by no amount of ingenious questioning could I succeed in unloosing their tongues. Now, however, my mother's prophetic utterance and counsel, spoken in our white house on the green hill-side, came back vividly to my memory, and I gazed in silence at Azala full of apprehensive thoughts.

My mother had more than once a.s.sured me that she knew not its meaning, and that, although she had sought explanation of my father, he had refused to reveal to her more than she had told me, and he, too, had died with the secret resolutely preserved. But the exact counterpart of the brand burnt into my own flesh was now before me. What could be the significance of the two asps? how, indeed, came the daughter of the great Sultan 'Othman, whom none dare approach, to be disfigured the same as myself, a free-booter of the Khalifa, a Dervish and an outcast?

"How earnest thou to bear the brand of the serpents?" I asked, when again I found speech. "An identical mark is upon my own breast also."

But ere she could answer my inquiry a stealthy movement behind startled us, and as I turned, two gigantic black eunuchs sprang upon me, while two others appeared from behind the rose silk hangings.

"Behold!" cried a man, whom I knew by his gorgeous dress to be the Aga of the Eunuchs. "It is a man, not a woman! The slave hath not lied.

Seize him!"

"May Allah show thee mercy!" gasped Azala, pale and trembling, with clasped hands. "We are betrayed!"

I struggled and fought with all the strength I possessed, but my brutal captors bore me down, and in their sinewy hands I was in a moment helpless as a babe. Then I knew that Azala was, alas! lost to me.

Romance, hope, pa.s.sion, one by one, dropped, emberlike, into the ashes.

CHAPTER FIVE.