Page:The Mating of the Blades.djvu/259

 he had vanquished the Ameer and conquered his bride, with its escutcheon engraved on the hilt, and a description of the Gengizkhani sword which the foreigner had taken with him.

When Aziza Nurmahal's father was on his death-bed, Hajji Akhbar Khan, Itizad el-Dowleh, understood that there would be trouble with the Europeans begging and bribing and bullying for “concessions,” with none left of the old clan except a young girl unused to the intrigues of the palace, the mosques, and the bazaars, with the land sure to be torn by civil strife unless a strong man's hand took the helm of the ship of state.

Thus the Hajji had gone to the far places, to Europe, to England, on his mad search for the possessor of the Gengizkhani blade.

“And he found thee, Al Nakia!” the princess wound up.

“Yes! He found me! And I found him. I found—all that—yonder!”

He pointed to where, under the rays of the sun, the flat, white roofs of the capital poured to the dip of the river, while, farther east, a chain of hills rose in even tiers, sharp and terse, then softened marvelously until, in the farthest east, they curved inward like a bay of darkness, stretched out into a high table land, and soared into two cube-shaped granite hills which looked like the pillars of a gigantic gate.

The gate of this far Central Asian land which had called to him with the call of the blood!

The call of the ancient centuries, the mysterious, atavistic energy which, more even than the sword of