CHAPTER XII
THE COUNTRY OF THE FALCON
From the dawn of the next day Edith wore the yashmak, the light veil that conceals a woman's face from the eyes down.
She had put it on voluntarily, and she dressed Aravang's wounds—deep gashes in the flesh of his body—of her own accord. As she suspected, the medicine pail had accompanied them. The big native was immensely surprised and grateful at this attention; and Iskander watched her efforts attentively, without manifesting disapproval. In fact, he seemed pleased.
A fortnight ago Edith would have sulked in the carriage—would have considered the injuries of the two men—Iskander had wrapped a scarf about his middle over the cut in his ribs, and refused curtly her offer of aid—as only partial punishment for their crime in carrying her off.
Now she had seen two men die in as many minutes. The vision of the two men lying on the floor of the serai would not leave her memory. And she did not want Aravang to die. The native of the scar had befriended her, and she felt that she had an ally, even if a humble one, in him. Iskander spoke of the incident only once.
"That dog of an Alaman, you know him?" He glanced at her searchingly. Iskander had ceased referring to her as Khanum—lady. "He knows you?"
"Who?"
"Abbas Abad, the Alaman slave dealer—he that did this"—pointing impatiently at Aravang. "You fled to him. Why?"
"No, Iskander," she had made answer quietly, "I do not know of him. He offered me a horse. In the serai he called me by name"
It was a short, bitter expletive, wrung from the Arab. "Do not be so foolish again. You cannot escape. So," he went on almost to himself, "Abbas Abad knew that you were with the caravan. He must have others with him, since he dared lift hand against the caravan. For he has not forgotten our law—blood for blood, a blow for a blow"
At this he fell silent, gazing keenly about the mountain slopes. The aspect of the countryside had changed. The barren gorges and black torrents had given way to sparkling valleys where the early sunlight glimmered on white carpets of dew. Occasionally the yurts—around felt tents—of a nomad settlement were to be seen, where small, muffled girls astride huge oxen stared at them, and cattle, children, and dogs littered the lush grass in happy confusion.
Tranquil Kirghiz bargained with their driver for relays of horses. They threaded sunny gullies, crashing through willow clumps and shallow, pebbly freshets, following an invisible path that was not the least semblance of a road. The rock shrines had given way to tiny blue and red mosques.
Edith wondered whether they had crossed the roof of the world to the region behind the Himalayas, and decided they had. She had seen a corpulent Chinese mandarin—at least he resembled the pictures she had come across, of mandarins—joggling along behind a shaggy, miniature pony, with a coolie running ahead. Endless flocks of sheep scampered away from them.
"Where," she remarked, emboldened by the fresh sunlight, the intoxicating air, and the recovery of Aravang, "is the house that is to be mine, Iskander? You said we were coming to it."
The Arab pointed up into the mountains they were ascending.
"There. In Yakka Arik. But the house belongs to your master, to one who is a master of many men."
Bewildered and disturbed, the girl could only say: "My—master?"
"Yess. If we are in time, and he is still alive. Then you may become a favored slave, or perhaps a wife. You are fair of face."
Stung, Edith sat up rigidly.
"I—a slave?"
Iskander shrugged.
"Or whatever your master wills. How should I know his mind?"
"And if"—Edith pondered former words of her captor—"we should find that this man is dead?"
"Then you would be less," the Arab indicated the flying dust of sand under the carriage wheels, "than that." Whereupon he turned his back deliberately, and Edith sank back upon the straw, biting her lips. A hand touched her sleeve and Aravang was upright on his elbow, his scarred face close to hers.
"Dono-van Khan," he whispered.
It had not occurred to Edith that Aravang understood their words. But there was an unmistakable gleam of intelligence in the native's dark eyes. "Whom are you taking me to?" She barely breathed the question.
"Dono-van Khan—John Dono-van."
"The man you call the Falcon?"
Aravang hesitated as if pondering the meaning of her words. Then, with a warning glance at Iskander's back, he nodded.
The tawny head of the girl sank upon her arms as she tried to think. They were taking her to John Donovan. Why? She did not know. The only certainty was that she was being carried to the house of the white man who—so Fraser-Carnie had said—had allied himself with the natives and was a power in these lawless hills.
The why burned into her thoughts. She felt very helpless. It was as if a chain bound her, a chain of many links. The medicine pail that she was to use was one link; the death of Jain Ali Beg, who had been called a faithless servant, was a link; the jealous care of her captors who slew men to safeguard her; the anxiety of Iskander
There were so many links. Abbas Abad, who seemed to be an enemy of Iskander. The Alaman had been seeking her. Again the why confronted her. But of one thing she was certain.
Much as she hated Iskander, she dreaded more the man called Abbas Abad. And she felt a greater hostility toward the unknown Donovan Khan. As the hours passed, she fed her anger against the white man who had been the cause of her abduction from the world of her father and her aunt—the life of her own people.
The chain—as she fancied it—was drawing her into another world, into an environment where the realities of yesterday were the unrealities of to-day—where men knelt daily to pray like children; where hidden hatred and open loyalty were part of the new religion; and where death passed almost unnoticed.
Unknown to herself, Edith was changing. The girl's inherent vitality was gathering to meet the demand of the new life. The scornful indifference of Iskander was a bitter tonic to her pride. False vanity and the sense of security fell away from her spirit like tattered fabrics of last year's ball dresses, cast from her body. It was well that this was so.
For Edith had entered the gates of the unknown world of Central Asia, where she was to play her part in a stern drama which was, after all, no drama but inexorable reality. She had been one of the ruling spirits of the world of civilization; here, she was no more than a child, and a very ignorant child.…
She started when she first heard the trumpets. They had been out of Kashgar about two days when a distant blast of sound came to her in the still air of evening. At times very faint, now and then the sound swelled strongly as if the hidden trumpeters were summoning her. A gigantic sound, vast and calm as the cliffs under which they were passing once more. Iskander glanced at her, his dark eyes alight under the hood with a kind of grave, sardonic humor.
"They are calling you. Mees Rand, always they call—these trumpets of Yakka Arik—to the stars, to the earth, and to the spaces of air. Yess. But now it is you they are calling." He touched the driver on the arm. "Hasten. Oh, hasten. It is late, late, and the sun sets."
To the girl he added:
"Dono-van Khan has a name for them. He calls them the trumpets of Je-richo."
They were rushing along the edge of a chasm. Peering from the side of the carriage, Edith could see only the darkness of a vast gorge, filled with clouds of vapor. Faintly she distinguished the glimmer of cascades and the black surfaces of pools. Vultures hovered over the mist.
"Yonder is their home—the watchtower of the Vulture," said Iskander, who had been observing her. She made out a gray, walled building, squat and ugly on the summit of the cliff across the chasm to the west From the walls a ruined tower uprose.
In the glow of the sunset the black bulk of the tower was outlined distinctly. Edith fancied that it did resemble the nest of some bird of prey. An empty nest. For the wind-swept walls appeared desolate.
"No one is there," she murmured. The aspect of the deserted tower had oppressed her.
"Once," Iskander shaded his eyes, to gaze intently into the sun, "our enemies, Abbas Abad and his master, watched from the tower when they came to prey upon Yakka Arik. Now the kites have flown far—far. Yet it is in my thoughts that they will come again, to settle upon the tower. If so, there will be war again"
Twilight closed its wings about them and the carriage plunged forward as the cliff trail wound downward toward the ravine and they left the watchtower on the heights behind them, to the left. When the gray stone structure passed from view some two or three miles to their rear, they came to a narrow, timber bridge spanning the rapids.
Out upon this bridge the carriage rumbled, guided by the reckless skill of the Kirghiz. Midway across it halted. Edith heard a sharp challenge from the further side and saw lights move out to meet them as Iskander answered. The Arab signed for her to step down and she faced a group of harsh-featured men, some bearing torches and some a vehicle strange to her—a palanquin.
An armed native waved the drowsy Kirghiz back, and the girl was assisted into the chair which at once moved forward. In its shuttered darkness Edith could see nothing. But she had caught a glimpse of what lay beyond—and above—the guarded bridge. In the afterglow of sunset she saw the expanse of a sheet of water open out, a lake ringed about by very high mountains—on its shore the lights of a village.
Voices reached her ears, above the pad-pad of the bearers. She was conscious of the scent of water, of seaweed and even fancied that she heard waves lapping along a shore. How could there be a seashore in the mountains?
Yet the murmur of water persisted, and the fragrance of pines struck into her senses. "I reckon I've crossed the Rubicon," she reflected. "And I'm going to Yakka Arik, Iskander says. I wonder if it's his home town"
A final, short blast of the trumpets interrupted her thoughts.
"Hasten!" Iskander called angrily.
The palanquin moved forward more jerkily and after an interval it halted.
Iskander opened the shutters and assisted her to the ground.
She was in a garden of some sort, because directly in front of her a white kiosk loomed, with flowers clustered at its base. They had passed through the wall, and now Iskander stalked to the kiosk, motioning her to follow.
They entered the small, arched doorway of a house. A red lamp, hanging overhead, revealed a stone hall, the floor covered with fine rugs. At the end of the hall the Arab drew back a damask curtain from a wide aperture. He beckoned her impatiently, his lean face rigid with anxiety. Edith walked forward slowly into a lighted room.
Three men, seated on cushions, looked up at her. Somewhat they resembled Iskander, being more richly clothed in heavy silks, wearing silver ornaments. One, a withered bulk of a man whose voluminous cloak dwarfed lean limbs, spoke to the Arab.
Iskander touched her arm and whispered:
"Look!"
She followed the direction of his eyes. On a couch at one side of the chamber a man lay motionless. A shrouded lamp at his head barely revealed a blanketed form. Edith stepped nearer, peering at the face.
She saw a white man, whose cheeks were wasted, whose eyes bore heavy circles. A brown beard covered his chin. The eyes were closed. The brow was furrowed as if in pain. Edith held her breath and watched, but she could see no movement of the chest under the blanket. The man's face was marblelike in its stillness.
"Dono-van Khan," said Iskander.