A Thunder of Trumpets Read online

  “No matter. Let it pass.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t say things like that,” she said, almost petulantly. “There are times when something you say almost frightens me—it is almost like a window opening unexpectedly and giving me a brief terrified glance into a terrible cosmos I did not suspect. For an instant you are like a stranger—a terribe, unhuman stranger; then—”

  “Then what?” There was something like pain in his fine eyes.

  But she shook her head; already the sensation prompting her words was fading.

  “Then you are just Ranjit—warm, and human and strong—so strong!”

  “Perhaps this is Karma,” he said presently, as if speaking his thoughts aloud. “Or perhaps in my blind selfishness I lie to myself, telling myself it is Karma—when it is only my own desire. I do not know. Is this phenomenon a signal that I have failed of reaching those heights for which I have struggled so long? Is it destined that I should so fail? Shall I accept defeat, or resist it? If this were Karma should I not recognize it? But I am all at sea. I am sure neither of myself nor of anything in the universe.”

  “I don’t understand!” She might have been a child, groping blindly in the dark “I love you! I want you! Neither race nor creed matters! I want to go with you—live with you in a cave on bread and water, if need be! I need you! You have become necessary to me!”

  “And is it Karma, or a condition I have myself created?” he wondered. “I have desired you from the moment I saw you—I, who have known thousands of beautiful women, in a hundred different lands. I fought it—resisted it—yet have succumbed at last. I have betrayed my teachings; have used what you might call magic to summon you to me, to blind the eyes of your people lest they sense your drifting from them. No, I must not think of what might or might not be. I love you. Not for that alone would I renounce the road in which I have set my feet; but you say you love me—that you need me. If it be the duty of a man to sacrifice his body to aid the weaker, how much more is it his duty to renounce Nirvana when this renunciation is his obligation!”

  “You would take me because you feel it is your obligation?” she whispered, dry-lipped.

  “No! No!” Suddenly she was in his arms, and the terrific impact of his magnetic vitality almost overcame her. “No! The gods help me! I want you! It is madness—it is insanity! But it is true. I am too selfish to let you go, for my sake or for yours. You cannot go my way—it would be senseless cruelty to expect it—but I will go yours. I’ll renounce my hopes of treading those heights I have glimpsed afar—the dreams and struggles of gener—of many years. I’ll sink down to the mediocre level of the trivial and the commonplace; but I must know that it is I, the man, whom you love, not the glamour of mystery and romance that fools have thrown about me, and that I—God help me!—have deliberately worn for your sake.

  “I love you!” she whispered, her head swimming. “No one but you! Only you!”

  For an instant he held her, while the world ceased to be around her; then he released her, steadying her with his arm as she reeled, and then stepped back.

  “Have you told Sir Hugh?”

  She shook her head, unable to speak.

  “We must tell him, at once. Absolute truth with others, and with ourselves, must be the foundation of our relationship. My head is in the dust with my guilt and shame. I have not practiced absolute truth in my dealings with you, either with you, or with him. I should have warned him. I should have told you of my desire at the very beginning, instead of trying to lift you to the level I thought I trod—conceited fool that I was! It was foolish and arrogant and cruel of me. So little have I learned through these long, bitter years—”

  She shivered, without knowing why, feeling as if a chill wind had blown upon her out of the spacial gulfs. She groped childishly for his hand; he took her hand tenderly and looked at her with a strange compassion. She bowed her head, filing weak and futile and near to tears, despite the soothing grasp of his strong fingers.

  “Come,” he said gently, turning toward the little gate.

  In silence they entered the garden; they had not gone a dozen paces when they saw Sir Hugh coming toward them in long strides. He shouted: “Bernice!”

  The next instant he had reached them and his long face lighted.

  “Jhundra Singh has just signed the concessions! Success! I’ve accomplished my first big job—why, Bernice, what’s the matter?”

  Unanalytical as he was, her expression checked his jubilance, set him staring puzzledly.

  “Hugh, I must speak to you,” she said, and on impulse added: “Ranjit, will you please leave us alone for a little?”

  He bowed and moved away, disappearing behind a clump of bushes. She turned to the Englishman, and drew a deep breath, finding her task a thousand times more distasteful than she had dreamed it would be.

  “Hugh, I—”

  “Listen!”

  They both whirled about as a rising clamor of frenzied humanity rose on the air.

  They never learned just who started the riot—chagrined business rivals, angry priests or mischievous Muhammadans. But anyway, there they came, pelting up the dusty street from the village, three or four hundred of them, howling rabble, brandishing clubs and blades and shrieking: “Slay the foreigners!”

  It was a nasty little riot, leaderless, abortive, without plan; but men can die as dead in a small riot as in a world war. Most of them rushed toward the main gate that led into the palace courtyard, where they were promptly shot and bayoneted by the prince’s Sikh guardsmen. There was a short, brief melee, bloody and rather horrible, with the casualties all on one side, and then the survivors broke and fled back toward the village howling lamentably, and leaving a dozen or more figures sprawled in the dust before the gate. Some were quite still and some writhed and shrieked.

  But in the first rush a part of the mob had turned aside and run into the garden through the little gate before it could be closed. Sir Hugh, interposing his long frame between them and Bernice, was struck by a thrown cudgel and fell senseless and bleeding on a carpet of crushed blossoms. Bernice screamed as a scimitar with a gleaming razor-edge was lifted—then Ranjit appeared from nowhere in particular. Bernice distinctly saw him catch the sweeping blade in his naked hand. No blood spurted, no cut showed on his flesh.

  The man who had struck the blow cowered back, releasing the weapon. Ranjit tossed it over the wall and faced the mob with his arms folded. He said nothing. His eyes were brooding, passionate. But a low whimper rose from the crowd and the loose ranks wavered like grain before a wind. Bernice felt the impact of a terrific power, as a man might feel the stir of a great wind, even when it was blowing away from him. She sensed that a terrific psychic force was emanating from Ranjit, akin perhaps to hypnotism yet vastly mightier, smiting the rioters with a mental and physical impact that was overpowering. They cringed back—suddenly they turned and fled screaming. And the shadow of a great fear filled Bernice’s soul as she saw Ranjit standing there somber and aloof, looking less like a human being than she had dreamed a man could look. It was not fear of him. But in a blinding, paralyzing, abasing wave of absolute realization she knew that he was above and beyond her so far that they could never meet on any plane but the physical. No more could she stand naked and upright and blind, with the great cosmic winds lashing her; a veil was torn back revealing the flesh she had thought was psychic fire—her own flesh, with its limitations she could never overcome.

  Hugh at her feet was suddenly an anchor to grip her fast to the shores of the humanity she knew. She dropped to her knees, clutching him and sobbing. And had she looked up she would have seen Ranjit standing over her with a shadow of weakness on his face that was more terrible than the grimness that had shown there as he faced the mob. Then it faded and the old, tender smile that seemed to encompass all frail humanity came back.

  She felt herself drawn gently aside as Ranjit knelt and pressed the edges of Sir Hugh’s wound together with his finger tips. The bleeding ceased insta
ntly, and Ranjit tore a strip of clean cloth from his own garments and bandaged the senseless man’s head with swift sure fingers.

  Servants were hurrying from the palace; Aunt Cecelia, her poise for once forgotten, shattered by the awful, unfamiliar crashing of musketry, the howling of dying men and the raw smell of blood, was screaming hysterically for her niece. She screamed even more loudly when she saw the servants carrying Sir Hugh toward the palace.

  Bernice was following them in, when Ranjit gently drew her back. They stood alone among the shrubs.

  “You love him,” said Ranjit gently.

  “I don’t know!” she wailed. “No! No! I love you—but—”

  “He is your kind; I am not,” said Ranjit slowly. “Our love was madness, born of my selfish desire. I to whom Truth was All, betrayed my own creed. I have dazzled you with a false glamour which even now clouds your reason and makes any decision cruelly hard.

  “You must see me as I really am, stripped of the cloak of illusion. I have seen you shudder when I spoke of my years on the Path. You must know the truth. I know your Western world does not understand or believe the science it calls Yogi philosophy. I cannot make you understand—cannot tell you in a moment what it has taken me a thousand years to learn—cannot tell you what are the compensations of renunciation. But life that stretches almost into immortality is one.

  “I am neither young nor handsome. I am old—so very old you would not believe me if I told you. But it is given to the Treaders of the Path to veil the reality of their appearances so that they shall not give offense to others. For an instant I shall lift that veil. Look!”

  His command was sharp and sudden, almost like a brutal blow. And Bernice cried out in fright and revulsion. Before her there stood no longer a young man, but an old, withered, toothless, bald, stooped creature that seemed scarcely human. His face was creased by a network of wrinkles, his skin like leather. As she shrank back, shivering with disgust, she saw those wrinkles slowly fade and vanish; the figure straightened, expanded. Ranjit stood smiling sadly before her, but she shuddered as she traced faintly in his virile features lines she had seen in the ancient’s countenance.

  She did not speak; there was no need; the heights she had glimpsed, vague and shining, vanished forever. Whimpering, she bowed her head in her hands. When she looked up, Ranjit was gone, and a strange breeze whispered through the forest. She turned and entered the palace where Sir Hugh waited.

  RECOMPENSE

  Weird Tales, Nov. 1938

  I have not heard lutes beckon me, nor the brazen bugles call,

  But once in the dim of a haunted lea I heard the silence fall.

  I have not heard the regal drum, nor seen the flags unfurled,

  But I have watched the dragons come, fire-eyed, across the world.

  ~

  I have not seen the horsemen fall before the hurtling host,

  But I have paced a silent hall where each step waked a ghost.

  I have not kissed the tiger-feet of a strange-eyed golden god,

  But I have walked a city’s street where no man else had trod.

  ~

  I have not raised the canopies that shelter revelling kings,

  But I have fled from crimson eyes and black unearthly wings.

  I have not knelt outside the door to kiss a pallid queen,

  But I have seen a ghostly shore that no man else has seen.

  ~

  I have not seen the standards sweep from keep and castle wall,

  But I have seen a woman leap from a dragon’s crimson stall,

  And I have heard strange surges boom that no man heard before,

  And seen a strange black city loom on a mystic night-black shore.

  ~

  And I have felt the sudden blow of a nameless wind’s cold breath,

  And watched the grisly pilgrims go that walk the roads of Death,

  And I have seen black valleys gape, abysses in the gloom,

  And I have fought the deathless Ape that guards the Doors of Doom.

  ~

  I have not seen the face of Pan, nor mocked the dryad’s haste,

  But I have trailed a dark-eyed Man across a windy waste.

  I have not died as men may die, nor sin as men have sinned,

  But I have reached a misty sky upon a granite wind.

  THE GHOST KINGS

  Weird Tales, Dec. 1938

  The ghost kings are marching; the midnight knows their tread,

  From the distant, stealthy planets of the dim, unstable dead;

  There are whisperings on the night-winds and the shuddering stars have fled.

  ~

  A ghostly trumpet echoes from a barren mountainhead;

  Through the fen the wandering witch-lights gleam like phantom arrows sped;

  There is silence in the valleys and the moon is rising red.

  ~

  The ghost kings are marching down the ages’ dusty maze;

  The unseen feet are tramping through the moonlight’s pallid haze,

  Down the hollow clanging stairways of a million yesterdays.

  ~

  The ghost kings are marching, where the vague moon-vapor creeps,

  While the night-wind to their coming, like a thund’rous herald sweeps;

  They are clad in ancient grandeur, but the world, unheeding, sleeps.

  THE KING AND THE OAK

  Weird Tales, Feb. 1939

  Before the shadows slew the sun the kites were soaring free,

  And Kull rode down the forest road, his red sword at his knee;

  And winds were whispering round the world: “King Kull rides to the sea.”

  ~

  The sun died crimson in the sea, the long gray shadows fell;

  The moon rose like a silver skull that wrought a demon’s spell,

  For in its light great trees stood up like specters out of hell.

  In spectral light the trees stood up, inhuman monsters dim;

  Kull thought each trunk a living shape, each branch a knotted limb,

  And strange unmortal evil eyes flamed horribly at him.

  ~

  The branches writhed like knotted snakes, they beat against the night,

  And one great oak with swayings stiff, horrific in his sight,

  Tore up its roots and blocked his way, grim in the ghostly light.

  ~

  They grappled in the forest way, the king and grisly oak;

  Its great limbs bent him in their grip, but never a word was spoke;

  And futile in his iron hand, a stabbing dagger broke.

  ~

  And through the tossing, monstrous trees there sang a dim refrain

  Fraught deep with twice a million years of evil, hate and pain:

  “We were the lords ere man had come and shall be lords again.”

  ~

  Kull sensed an empire strange and old that bowed to man’s advance

  As kingdoms of the grass-blades before the marching ants,

  And horror gripped him; in the dawn like someone in a trance

  ~

  He strove with bloody hands against a still and silent tree;

  As from a nightmare dream he woke; a wind blew down the lea

  And Kull of high Atlantis rode silent to the sea.

  DESERT DAWN

  Weird Tales, March 1939

  Dim seas of sand swim slowly into sight

  As if from out the silence swiftly born;

  Faint foremost herald of the coming morn,

  Red tentacles reach out into the night;

  The shadows gray, then fade to rosy white.

  The stars fade out, the greatest and the least;

  Now a red rose is blooming in the east,

  And from its widening petals comes the light.

  ~

  While, fleecy clouds are fading from on high,

  The sun-god flings afar his golden brands;

  A breeze springs up and races ’mid the dunes,

  A-whisper with
old tales and mystic runes;

  Now blue and gold ride rampant in the sky,

  And now full day comes marching o’er the sands.

  ALMURIC

  Weird Tales, May-July 1939

  It was not my original intention ever to divulge the whereabouts of Esau Cairn, or the mystery surrounding him. My change of mind was brought about by Cairn himself, who retained a perhaps natural and human desire to give his strange story to the world which had disowned him and whose members can now never reach him. What he wishes to tell is his affair. One phase of my part of the transaction I refuse to divulge; I will not make public the means by which I transported Esau Cairn from his native Earth to a planet in a solar system undreamed of by even the wildest astronomical theorists. Nor will I divulge by what means I later achieved communication with him, and heard his story from his own lips, whispering ghostily across the cosmos.