Page:Weird Tales Volume 30 Number 02 (1937-08).djvu/109

a chapter which treats of the manners and customs of the modern Wallachs, runs as follows:

"As a protection against the fevers which are epidemic in this country during the trying hot summers, the peasants of Wallachia brew a strong and very mysterious drug whose formula seems to have been successfully kept a secret from outsiders. It is said to be a mixture of powerful herbs and the juices of various uncanny reptiles and insects, and there are hints that ceremonies much like the incantations of witches play a part in its preparation. It is so powerful that when taken for medicinal effect, a dose consists of only one tiny drop. In any considerable quantity it is a deadly poison. Many Wallachians appear to make use of it frequently, but with the most careful precautions and with the utmost secrecy. . . ."

I showed the paragraph to a Wallachian acquaintance who knew German. He turned pale and declared vehemently that he had no idea what the ignorant traveler was gabbling about. But it was perfectly clear that I had touched him in a tender spot, and I was very careful not to mention the paragraph to Gica the Magician.

Or to his cheerful old wife, who listened complacently and with something approaching a smirk when her husband told the story of which she was the heroine.

There is a tale they tell of voices that called eerily by night in the marble streets of long-fallen Bel Yarnak, saying: "Evil is come to the land; doom falls on the fair city where our children's children walk. Wo, wo unto Bel Yarnak." Then did the dwellers in the city gather affrightedly in huddled groups, casting furtive glances at the Black Minaret that spears up gigantically from the temple gardens; for, as all men know, when doom comes to Bel Yarnak, the Black Minaret will play its part in that dreadful Ragnarok.

Wo, wo unto Bel Yarnak! Fallen for ever are the shining silver towers, lost the magic, soiled the glamor. For stealthily and by night, under the triple moons that hurtle swiftly across the velvet sky, doom crept out inexorably from the Black Minaret.

Mighty magicians were the priests of the Black Minaret. Mighty were they, alchemists and sorcerers, and always they