The Slayer of SoulsChambers, Robert W. (Robert William)
Science
The Slayer of Souls
Chambers, Robert W. (Robert William)
Conspiracies -- Fiction; Fantasy fiction; Magic -- Fiction
“Show him to us in your own way,” he said, “and deal with him as he
must be dealt with.”
A gleam passed across her pale face and she tried to smile at her
husband.
Then, turning down the hammock to the east, she walked noiselessly
forward over the fibrous litter, the men on either side of her, their
pistols poised.
They had halted on the edge of an open glade, ringed with young pines
in fullest plumage.
Tressa was standing very straight and still in a strange, supple,
agonised attitude, her left forearm across her eyes, her right hand
clenched, her slender body slightly twisted to the left.
The men gazed pallidly at her with tense, set faces, knowing that the
girl was in terrible mental conflict against another mind—a powerful,
sinister mind which was seeking to grasp her thoughts and control them.
Minute after minute sped: the girl never moved, locked in her psychic
duel with this other brutal mind,—beating back its terrible
thought-waves which were attacking her, fighting for mental supremacy,
struggling in silence with an unseen adversary whose mental dominance
meant death.
Suddenly her cry rang out sharply in the moonlight, and then, all at
once, a man in white stood there in the lustre of the moon—a young,
graceful man dressed in white flannels and carrying on his right arm
what seemed to be a long white cloak.
Instantly the girl was transformed from a living statue into a lithe,
supple, lightly moving thing that passed swiftly to the west of the
glade, keeping the young man in white facing the wind, which was
blowing and tossing the plumy young pines.
“So it is _you_, young man, with whom I have been wrestling here under
the moon of the only God!” she said in a strange little voice, all
vibrant and metallic with menacing laughter.
“It is I, Keuke Mongol,” replied the young man in white, tranquilly;
yet his words came as though he were tired and out of breath, and the
hand he raised to touch his small black moustache trembled as if from
physical exhaustion.
“Yarghouz!” she exclaimed. “Why did I not know you there on the golf
links, Assassin of the Seventh Tower? And why do you come here with
your shroud over your arm and hidden under it, in your right hand, a
flask full of death?”
He said, smiling:
“I come because you are to die, Heavenly-Azure Eyes. I bring you your
shroud.” And he moved warily westward around the open circle of young
pines.
Instantly the girl flung her right arm straight upward.
“Yarghouz!”
“I hear thee, Heavenly Azure.”
“Another step to the west and I shatter thy flask of gas.”
“With what?” he demanded; but stood discreetly motionless.
“With what I grasp in an empty palm. Thou knowest, Yarghouz.”
“I have heard,” he said with smiling uncertainty, “but to hear of force
that can be hurled out of an empty palm is one thing, and to see it and
feel it is another. I think you lie, Heavenly Azure.”
“So thought Gutchlug. And died of a yellow snake.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account