Kull: Exile of Atlantis (31 page)

But here at his elbow was Mystery. Clinging to the vines which covered the wall, was a small wizened fellow who looked much like the professional beggars which swarmed the more sordid of the city’s streets. He seemed harmless, with his thin limbs and monkey face, but Kull regarded him with a scowl.

“I see I shall have to plant sentries at the very foot of my window, or tear these vines down,” said the king. “How did you get through the lines?”

The wizened one put his skinny finger across puckered lips for silence, then with a simian like dexterity, slid a hand over the sill through the bars into the room. There he silently handed Kull a piece of parchment. The king unrolled it and read: “King Kull: if you value your life, or the welfare of the kingdom, follow this guide to the place where he shall lead you. Tell no one. Let yourself be not seen by the guards. The regiments are honeycombed with treason and if you are to live and hold the throne, you must do exactly as I say. Trust the bearer of this note implicitly.” It was signed “Tu, Chief Councillor of Valusia” and was sealed with the royal signet ring.

Kull knit his black brows. The thing had an unsavory look–but this was Tu’s hand writing–he noted the peculiar, almost imperceptible quirk in the last letter of Tu’s name, which was the councillor’s trade mark, so to speak. And then the sign of the seal, the seal which could not be duplicated–Kull sighed.

“Very well,” he said. “Wait until I arm myself.”

Dressed and clad in light chain mail armor, Kull turned again to the window. He gripped the bars, one in each hand, and cautiously exerting his superhuman strength, felt them give until even his broad shoulders could slip between them. Clambering out he caught the vines and swung down them with as much ease as was displayed by the small beggar who preceded them.

At the foot of the wall, Kull caught his companion’s arm.

“How did you elude the guard?” he whispered.

“To such as accosted me, I showed the sign of the royal seal.”

“That will scarcely answer now,” grunted the king. “Follow me; I know their routine.”

Some twenty minutes followed, of lying in wait behind a hedge or tree until a sentry passed, of dodging quickly into the shadows and making short stealthy dashes–at last they came to the outer wall. Kull took his guide by the ankles and lifted him until his fingers clutched the top of the wall. Once astride, the beggar reached down a hand to aid the king, but Kull, with a contemptuous gesture, backed off a few paces, took a short run and bounding high in the air, caught the parapet with one upflung hand, swinging his great form up across the wall top with an almost incredible display of strength and agility.

The next instant the two strangely incongruous figures had dropped down on the opposite side and faded into the gloom.

IV
“HERE I STAND AT BAY!”

Delcartes, daughter of the house of bora Ballin, was nervous and frightened. Upheld by her high hopes and her sincere love, she did not regret her rash actions of the last few hours, but she earnestly wished for the coming of midnight and her lover.

Up to the present, her escapade had been easy. It was not easy for any one to leave the city after night fall, but she had ridden away from her father’s house just before sundown, telling her mother that she was going to spend the night with a girl friend of hers–well for her that women were allowed unusual freedom in the city of Valusia, and were not kept hemmed in in seraglios and veritable prison houses as they were in the Eastern empires; a habit which survived the Flood.

Delcartes had ridden boldly through the Eastern gate, and then made directly for the Accursed Gardens, two miles east of the city. These Gardens had once been the pleasure resort and country estate of a great nobleman, but tales of grim debauches and ghastly rites of devil worship began to get abroad, and finally the people, maddened by the regular disappearance of their children, had descended on the Gardens in a frenzied mob, and had hanged the bad prince to his own portals. Combing the Gardens, the people had found strange foul things, and in a flood of repulsion and horror, had partially destroyed the mansion and the summer houses, the arbors, the grottoes and the walls. But built of imperishable marble, many of the buildings had resisted both the sledges of the mob and the corrosion of time. Now, deserted for a hundred years, a miniature jungle had sprung up within the crumbling walls and the rank vegetation overran the ruins.

Delcartes concealed her steed in a ruined summer house and seating herself on the cracked marble floor, settled herself to wait. At first it was not bad. The gentle summer sunset flooded the land, softening all scenes with its mellow gold. The green sea about her, shot with white gleams which were marble walls and crumbling roofs, intrigued her. But as night fell and the shadows merged, Delcartes grew nervous. The night wind whispered grisly things through the branches and the broad palm leaves and the tall grasses and the stars seemed cold and far away. Legends and tales came back to her, and she fancied that above the throb of her pounding heart, she could hear the rustle of unseen black wings, and the mutter of fiendish voices.

She prayed for midnight and Dalgar. Had Kull seen her then, he would not have thought of her strange deep nature, nor the signs of her great future; he would have seen only a frightened little girl who passionately desired to be taken up and coddled.

But the thought of leaving never entered her mind.

Time seemed as if it would never pass, but pass it did somehow. At last a faint glow betrayed the rising of the moon, and she knew the hour was close to midnight.

Then suddenly there came a sound which brought her to her feet, her heart flying into her throat. Somewhere in the supposedly deserted Gardens there crashed into the silence a shout and a clang of steel. A short hideous scream chilled the blood in her veins, then silence fell in a suffocating shroud.

Dalgar–Dalgar! The thought beat like a hammer in her dazed brain. Her lover had come and had fallen foul of some one–or something–men
or–?

She stole from her hiding place, one hand over her heart which seemed about to burst through her ribs. She stole along a broken pave, and the whispering palm leaves brushed against her like ghostly fingers. About her lay a pulsating gulf of shadows, vibrant and alive with nameless evil. There was no sound.

Ahead of her loomed the ruined mansion; then without a sound two men stepped into her path. She screamed once, then her tongue froze with terror. She tried to flee but her legs would not work and before she could move, one of the men had caught her up and tucked her under his arm as if she were a tiny child.

“A woman,” he growled in a language which Delcartes barely understood, and recognized as Verulian. “Lend me your dagger and I’ll–”

“We haven’t time now,” interposed the other, speaking in the Valusian tongue. “Toss her in there with him, and we’ll finish them both together. We must get Gonda here, before we kill him–he wants to question him a little.”

“Small use,” rumbled the Verulian giant, striding after his companion. “He won’t talk–I can tell you that–he’s opened his mouth only to curse us, since we captured him.”

Delcartes, tucked ignominiously under her captor’s arm, was frozen with fear, but her mind was working. Who was this “him” they were going to question and then kill? The thought that it must be Dalgar drove her own fear from her mind, and flooded her soul with a wild and desperate rage. She began to kick and struggle violently and was punished with a resounding smack which brought tears to her eyes and a cry of pain to her lips. She lapsed into a humiliated submission and was presently tossed unceremoniously through a shadowed doorway, to sprawl in a disheveled heap on the floor.

“Hadn’t we better tie her?” queried the giant.

“What use? She can’t escape. And she can’t untie
him
. Hurry up; we’ve got work to do.”

Delcartes sat up and looked timidly about. She was in a small chamber the corners of which were screened with spider webs. Dust was deep on the floor, and fragments of marble from the crumbling walls littered it. Part of the roof or ceiling was gone, and the slowly rising moon poured light through the aperture. By its light she saw a form on the floor, close to the wall. She shrank back, her teeth sinking into her lip with horrified anticipation, then she saw with a delirious sensation of relief that the man was too large to be Dalgar. She crawled over to him and looked into his face. He was bound hand and foot and gagged; above the gag, two cold grey eyes looked up into hers. Eyes in which cold flame danced, like a volcano gleaming under fathoms of grey ice.

“King Kull!” Delcartes pressed both hands against her temples while the room reeled to her shocked and astounded gaze. The next instant her slim strong fingers were at work on the gag. A few minutes of agonized effort and it came free. Kull stretched his powerful jaws and swore in his own language, considerate, even in that moment, of the girl’s tender ears.

“Oh my lord, how came you here?” the girl was wringing her hands.

“Either my most trusted councillor is a traitor or I am a madman!” growled the giant. “One came to me with a letter in Tu’s hand writing, bearing even the royal seal. I followed him, as instructed, through the city and to a gate the existence of which I had never known. This gate was unguarded and apparently unknown to any but they who plotted against me. Outside the gate one awaited us with horses and we came full speed to these damnable Gardens. At the outer edge we left the horses, and I was led, like a blind dumb fool for sacrifice, into this ruined mansion.

“As I came through the door, a great man-net fell on me, entangling my sword arm, and binding my limbs, and a dozen great rogues sprang on me. Well, mayhap my taking was not so easy as they had thought. Two of them were swinging on my already encumbered right arm so I could not use my sword, but I kicked one in the side and felt his ribs give way, and bursting some of the net’s strands with my left hand, I gored another with my dagger. He had his death thereby and screamed like a lost soul as he gave up the ghost.

“But by Valka, there were too many of them. At last they had me stripped of my armor”–Delcartes saw the king wore only a sort of loin cloth–“and bound as you see me. The devil himself could not break these strands–no, scant use to try to untie the knots. One of the men was a seaman and I know of old the sort of knots they tie! I was a galley slave once, you know.”

“But what can I do?” wailed the girl, wringing her hands.

“Take a heavy piece of marble and flake off a sharp sliver,” said Kull swiftly. “You must cut these ropes–”

She did as she was bid and was rewarded with a long thin piece of stone, the concave edge of which was as keen as a razor with a jagged edge.

“I fear I will cut your skin, sire,” she apologized as she began work.

“Cut skin, flesh and bone, but get me free!” snarled Kull, his ferocious eyes blazing. “Trapped like a blind fool! Oh, imbecile that I am! Valka, Honan and Hotath! But let me get my hands on the rogues–how came you here?”

“Let us talk of that later,” said Delcartes rather breathlessly. “Just now there is time for haste.”

Silence fell as the girl sawed at the stubborn strands giving no heed to her own tender hands which were soon lacerated and bleeding. Slowly, strand by strand the cords gave way; but there was still enough to hold the ordinary man helpless, when a heavy step sounded outside the door.

Delcartes froze. A voice spoke: “He is within, Gonda, bound and gagged and helpless. With him some Valusian wench that we caught wandering about the Garden.”