by Lin Carter
Cautiously retracing his steps to the place where we had camped, he searched the turf, finding nothing.
If One-Eye and Eric Carstairs had vanished, Xask sagely concluded, at least he knew where Fumio had gone. And promptly the slender Zarian entered the jungles and began his search.
Fumio had not given a moment's thought to the fate of One-Eye, Xask or Eric Carstairs. Indeed, the Thandarian was rather relieved to be rid of us, for he feared One-Eye, distrusted Xask and hated me.
Things were other, however, with Xask. Unused to daring the perils of the wild alone, Xask desired to find a comrade to stand at his side, and was confident of his abilities to coax or bully or persuade or intimidate virtually any conceivable companion into doing his bidding.
Nor was he wrong in this estimate of his abilities. For the clever little Zarian was another Machiavelli, born and bred. And the secret of his swift rise to power in the Scarlet City, as in the cave kingdom of the Drugars, lay in this natural skill.
It did not prove difficult for Xask to follow the trail of Fumio, despite his almost total lack of anything remotely resembling woodcraft. And the reason for this was the noise which the cowardly Thandarian made as he blundered through the brush in his panicky flight.
Fumio was traveling in as straight a line as was possible, considering the thick growth of the jungle and the numerous natural obstacles. And once Xask ascertained the direction of that flight, he resigned himself to patiently following that same direction.
Soon, however, he became intensely irritated. Twigs and bushes tore and dissarranged the graceful folds of his Zarian garment. Mud and leaf-mulch beslimed his legs and the hem of his garment. Thorns scratched his bare arms and face; gnats and other insects bit him in the more tender portions of his anatomy, and flew into his eyes.
And he began to sweat.
Xask did not like to sweat. It seemed to his way of thinking injurious to his dignity to perspire: it was not only uncomfortable but a token of physical labor, and Xask had always avoided physical labor whenever possible.
He became very uncomfortable. And he made himself a promise that, when once he had caught up to Fumio and had bullied or cowed or intimidated him, he would make him pay for these discomforts and indignities.
Thinking with cold relish on the various ways in which he could extract satisfaction from making Fumio squirm, Xask proceeded through the jungle for an interminable period.
Lacking the great physical strength and endurance of a warrior such as Fumio, the slighter, older man tired more swiftly and was soon reeling with dizzy exhaustion. But he did not dare pause in order to rest or refresh himself, for Fumio was still blundering along in full flight far ahead, and Xask knew that once the man he was following paused in his flight and recovered his wits, he could proceed in any direction-and without creating undue noise which could attract predators. The Thandarians can progress through the jungle as soundlessly as any Algonquin, and once Fumio stopped running and got over his panic, Xask knew he could vanish into the depths easily, which would leave the Zarian all alone.
And this did not at all suit the plans of Xask; therefore, although every muscle in his body by this point ached beyond tolerance, and thirst had dried the lining of his mouth and throat, Xask forced his weary legs to keep moving.
The sounds which Fumio made in his flight had long since ceased. And Xask redoubled his efforts in order to catch up with the fugitive before he had a chance to disappear. Erelong, the Zarian came limping through the wild to where a small spring poured fresh water from a pile of rocks, and the resultant brook went gurgling off through the woods. Xask was powerfully tempted to pause and refresh himself; indeed, he yielded to that temptation, but not without cautiously surveying his surroundings.
And the first thing he saw was Fumio alseep in the crotch of a nearby tree.
The second thing he saw was the enormous bulk of a monstrous reptile shouldering through the brush as it lumbered between the boles of the trees. The small wicked eyes in the tiny head at the end of its long prehensile neck spied the man-morsel slumbering in the tree.
Alas, the tidbit, however tempting, was beyond the dinosaur's reach.
Swiveling its head about, those wicked eyes spied Xask, where he stood frozen by the brook, cold water dribbling from between numb fingers.
The monster had a high, humped back, lined with a double crest of bony blades which dwindled in size as they followed the length of its short tail.
From this, Xask recognized the saurian for a drunth-one of the most fearsome of the predators of and one which, unfortunately, was a meat-eater. I believe that Professor Potter, had he been here, would have known the giant reptile as a stegosaurus.
However, the Professor was happily not on the scene, but Xask was. And to the philosophical, if minute, brain of the drunth, one man-morsel is about the same as another.
And it came at him like a living avalanche of armored muscle-
Chapter 17. THE OPENING OF THE DOOR
After Darya returned to her place in the slave pens, she shared the cold, repulsive gruel with the others who dwelt in the same chamber, and composed herself for slumber. But the girl, although weary from the tasks of the day, did not find it easy to drift into sleep. For to meet again with Eric Carstairs, to exchange words with him and to learn that somewhat of the feelings she felt for the tall, black-haired stranger were felt by him in return, was enough to make her heart beat faster and her superb young breasts to rise and fall with the quickening of her breath.
In truth, the jungle girl was not certain how to define those feelings, for the time we had spent together in the slave ranks of the Drugars had been all too brief. And in the considerable interval of time since they had broken free of the Apemen, she had long since resigned herself to the knowledge that I must have been slain. The women of know all too well that survival is a hard and continuous struggle; they become accustomed to the harsh realities of just how fragile human life is in the Underground World as they see fathers, husbands, sons and lovers perish in the hunt or in war, or to hostile nature, with its earthquakes and storms and gigantic predators.
But now-unexpectedly, beyond even hope!-the tall stranger had reappeared in her life; and now her heart thrilled to the discovery that, all this while, he had been struggling to find and rescue her once again. As she realized what that meant in terms of the feeling which he entertained for her, and which remained as yet only tentatively suggested, the blood sang in her veins and the turmoil of her emotions seethed in her heart.
His plans for escape thrilled her, as well; for escape from this ghastly underworld of fetid gloom and listless slaves was the substance of her hopes and dreams. And, somehow, knowing that Eric Carstairs was near, her hopes sprang to life with redoubled vigor . . . while the blackhaired man was not sujat, no ghost to walk through walls of solid stone, no miracle worker embued with tremendous powers, just to know that he was near gave her cause to believe that an escape to freedom was at least possible.
To be this near to freedom-to hope for an escape into the jungles with the tall man at her side-to know that her mighty sire and all his host of warriors were not far off, and had not given over their attempt to rescue her from peril-all of these were as a potent intoxicant to the emotions of the girl.
How cruelly ill-timed, then, to know that all these hopes were doomed ....
For Darya, too, knew that she and Jorn and all of the Sotharians were to be given over to the hellish embrace of the monstrous leech things when next she woke.
Tears came to the eyes of the brave and gallant maid. She thrust the knuckles of one small hand against her mouth to stifle the sob that rose unbidden in her breast.
It would not do to have the others see her weep.
But, O, Eric Carstairs! To be this close to the one she so powerfully desired-and to have her hopes dashed to the cold stone floor!
And, as the little ironies of Fate would have it, at almost that very insta
nt, Tharn of Thandar was even nearer than the Stone Age princess could dare to hope.
His agile huntsmen and scouts had scaled the cliff to its crest. That cliff ran the length of the promontory like a spine, and along the crest Komad and his scouts scrutinized the naked stone for any sign or token that Darya and her companion had passed this way.
Here and there, shallow depressions in the stony crest bore loose dirt blown hither by the updrafts that howled between the Peaks of Peril; loose rock, crumbled by rain and wind, formed deposits of broken shale; plants, their seeds wind-carried to this aerie, sprouted in clefts of the rock; mold and lichen, fungi and moss, nourished by steamy rains, carpeted places sheltered by higher rock.
It was in these places that the keen eyes of Komad the scout ascertained that Darya had passed this way.
It was not the sort of proof that would have been tangible, or even visible, to the eyes of such as you or I.
A mere matter of a dry pebble dislodged from its bed by a passing foot, a slithering heap of shale disturbed, the smear of wetness where a hand or knee had crushed the moss of lichen. But to the hawklike gaze of such as Komad of Thandar, the evidence was blatantly obvious, and he passed the word down to where his chief stood with stolid features, arms folded upon his mighty breast, as if thereby to still the throb of hope within his father's heart.
Once Komad had found proof that Darya had scaled the cliff, Tharn gave swift orders to his warriors to scale the wall of rock. Not all of the men of Thandar were as nimble as the scouts and huntsmen, so crude ladders were swiftly constructed whereby all could ascend to the crest. These were merely the trunks of saplings or of fallen trees, their limbs lopped off with stone axes so that the stumps could serve as rungs.
When six of these were leaned against the stony wall, the warriors climbed in single file. And in less time than it would take me to describe this scene, all were assembled atop the rocky spine of the peninsula.
Here Komad, with every skill and intuition he possessed, strove to follow the meager trail. Since the markings made by Darya and her companion continued for a time along the crest of the wall, he continued along the top of the cliffs until at length he reached the site of the hidden trapdoor which had, you will remember, tilted to precipitate Jorn and Darya into the trap of the Gorpaks.
Komad paused, at the far end of the trapdoor, turning his head from side to side as if baffled. He continued on for twenty paces; then he returned to the place whereon first he had paused. Loose patches of windblown soil lay ahead, and a patch of damp moss flourished in the shadow of a tall boulder. Had Darya and her companion continued farther ahead from this spot, surely they would have left the marks of their passage in one or the other place.
But neither the windblown soil nor the damp moss had recently been disturbed. And there was no sign or token that the lost Princess and her companion had veered to either side of the clifftop to attempt a descent.
Komad scratched his grizzled cheek, baffled. It was as if the viewless air had opened an invisible jaw to swallow the two up. But this was nonsense; ghosts and monsters and witch doctors there might well be, but anything physical enough to have done such a deed would itself have left markings. And no such markings met his eagle eye.
Since they had gone neither ahead nor to either side, nor had they retraced their steps, in what other direction could the two possibly have gone?
That was the question Komad posed to himself as he stood immobile, deep in thought.
He looked down.
The stone slab under his feet seemed as solid as did the rest of the cliff. And he could not discover so much as a hairline crack that seemed artificial. Nevertheless ....
Had Komad of Thandar ever, by some miracle, been able to read Conan Doyle's tales of Mr. Sherlock Holmes, he would have nodded in agreement with that master detective's most celebrated dictum:
"Eliminate the impossible. Whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."
Borrowing a stone axe from one of the warriors--who crouched on their heels in silent vigil, alertly watching as Komad strove to trace the whereabouts of Darya-the scout rapped against the stony slab and listened with ears no less keen than were his eyes.
Then he moved two paces farther on, and repeated the action.
Then two paces more.
Suddenly, the sound seemed to him subtly different. In the first two places, the stone had rung with a faint but definite echo to the blow of the axe. But beyond those two sites, the stone rung with a dull thud.
Komad looked up.
"The stone is hollow there," he said, pointing.
Without a moment's delay, Tharn gave the proper commands to the men who stood eager and ready.
As far as the High Chief of Thandar was concerned, he was perfectly willing to rip the very Peaks of Peril asunder in order to find his missing daughter. And the warriors of Thandar were themselves no less willing, if only it would enable them to rescue their lost Princess ....
From the edge of the cliff, behind where Tharn and his warriors chopped and pried and levered at the rocky slab, the Barbary pirates watched from places of concealment, baffled at the mysterious actions of the savages.
The Thandarians were too numerous and too well-armed for Achmed of El-Cazar to risk an open battle; besides, there seemed to be no need to fight the jungle men. For the moment, he was perfectly content to wait, to watch, to spy upon them, for it seemed that they, too, were searching for something.
It never occurred to Achmed to guess that both his men and the savages were searching for the same young woman.
"What is it that they do, the wild men?" inquired Tarbu in a hoarse whisper, from where he crouched at the elbow of the first mate of the Red Witch.
Achmed shrugged, mystified.
"Allah alone knows," he muttered. For it seemed to him as if the savages were trying to break into the very fabric of the cliffs. Although why they should, or what it was they were after, was beyond the imaginings of the Moor.
"Let us fall upon them, and slay," grumbled a burly Turk named Kemal, who crouched nearby in the shade of the boulder. "To lurk like dogs-to slink and scurry-is not seemly for the heroes of El-Cazar."
Achmed gave him a glare of fierce reproof.
"You will lurk and scurry like dogs, O dog of Istamboul, if I bid you do so," he snarled. "They are armed and they are many-"
"No more than are we," grunted the Turk, hefting the hilt of his dented scimitar significantly, his magnificent mustachios (which were his pride and joy) bristling belligerently.
"Still thy tongue, O Kemal, or I shall slit it for thee, and thou shalt croak all thy days like a raven," said Achmed coldly. "It behooves us now to wait and watch and listen-"
Grumbling and calling upon his prophet, the fat Turk subsided. The Barbary pirates had watched from the shelter of the trees as the primitives had felled and trimmed the tall saplings whereby they had scaled the sheer wall of the cliffs. Once the savages were gone farther down the rocky spine of the promontory, Achmed had cautiously bade his corsairs ascend the cliff by means of the same crude ladders. Now they held the rear of the Thandarian host, crouched behind tall spires of rock and round boulders, watching carefully.
"The Barbarossa would not hide like a starveling cur," grouched Kemal to the man nearest him, but in low tones so that Achmed would not overhear.
"The Barbarossa is not here, dog of a Turk," spat the lean Arab at his side. "And the mate Achmed is. So we must do his bidding . . . of what use to engage a band of howling savages? We are not here for war, but to seize a runaway girl. Now be silent, and let us observe in silence. . . "
Powerful and determined were the warriors of Thandar, and indefatigable. But, for all the vigor of their unrelenting effort, the secret of the mechanism which controlled the stone trapdoor continued to elude them.
Nevertheless, they toiled on.
Tharn frowned, his head heavy. For all the jungle monarch knew, every m
oment might count. Even at this moment, a horrible doom might be creeping upon his helpless daughter in those black and unknown depths below his feet.
Somehow he guessed that time was running out . . . .
But there was nothing to do but strive on.
Chapter 18. BURNING BRIGHT
Harsh gongs awoke us from our restless, troubled slumbers. The bars were withdrawn which blocked the door to our pen, and bandy-legged little Gorpaks came waddling between the rows of sleeping men and women, rousing us with flicks of the whip and sharp, barking commands.
When we were assembled into ranks, my personal adversary, little Captain Lutho, came strutting and preening before us, eyeing us up and down with shrewd, gloating gaze.
"Attention, animals!" he snapped. "It is now your inestimable honor to serve Those who are in every way greater than yourselves, as They are in every way superior even to us Gorpaks, their servants and minions! Reluctance and recalcitrance will not be tolerated, for your entire purpose in this world is to obey the least whim of Those who are as far above you in the scheme of nature as you are above the worms that delve in the dark places of the earth . . . ."
The pompous little dwarf went on in this general line for a lengthy harangue, before we at last were herded out of our dungeon and down a winding corridor to our unknown doom.
As we marched stolidly along, I caught the opportunity to exchange meaningful glances with Hurok, Varak and Garth, the Omad of the men of Sothar. During the sleep period just past, we had talked long, laying our plans. Garth had been of the opinion that we should spring upon the Gorpaks the moment they dispersed down the aisles between our rows of sleeping places, but I counseled delay.
