The Zanthodon MEGAPACK ™: The Complete 5-Book Series (44 page)

One of these chairs was occupied by Yussef ben Ali, who lounged moodily, one long booted leg draped over the chair arm, staring with brooding eyes into a wine goblet of chased gold.

The second chair groaned under the ponderous weight of Zodeen the Algerian. He was gobbling fruit and cheese from a silver dish, washing the meal down with gulps of red wine. In contrast to the moodiness of Yussef ben Ali, the fat Algerian seemed unconcerned.

A bell tinkled somewhere far off, its chime muffled by the rock walls of the chamber. At the sound, Yussef started and gave voice to an exclamation.

A moment later, the green drapery was drawn aside by the slender hand of the Moorish dancing-girl, Zoraida. She wore a long robe of dark red cloth beneath which her slim legs gleamed in their pantaloons of diaphanous gauze. Bracelets of solid gold clanked upon her supple wrists. Her bewitching features were veiled.

The drawing aside of the drapery revealed an aspect of the room hitherto undescribed—a door of stout wood bound with strips of green brass.

Behind Zoraida’s slim figure loomed a tall gaunt man whose khalifeh or headdress was drawn in loose folds to conceal his long-jawed visage. But had Achmed the Moor been invisibly present, he would at once have recognized the newcomer as none other than Ayyub, the fifth member of the Council of Captains.

Nodding at Zodeen, who broke off from his guzzling just long enough to grunt a surly greeting, the tall pirate chieftain bowed slightly to Yussef and seated himself in the empty chair. Yussef turned intent eyes upon Zoraida, who stood with folded arms before the portal, as if guarding the secret door.

“None perceived your coming hence, I trust, O Zoraida,” he demanded, “nor the approach of Ayyub the Captain?”

“None, my lord,” replied the Mooress. “The secret tunnel you had dug beneath your house and the cellars of old Rustum’s pleasure-house remains a secret to all.…”

“Aye,” grinned the saturnine Ayyub. “All of El-Cazar saw me stride into the bordello of Rustum, and whatever eyes may scrutinize my movements have doubtless satisfied themselves that even now Ayyub lies in the warm arms of his favorite Negress, Fatima! None will suspect this meeting, O my friend, any more than they have those which preceded it.”

“It is well,” smiled Yussef. “O Zoraida, did all go as I planned?”

“It did, Master. The savage girl found and hid the knife which I caused to be thrown at her feet while my friend Ayesha pretended to fall in a fit. Even now I doubt me not, the savage is cutting her way through the window screen to seek her freedom.…”

Satisfied, Yussef nodded without speaking.

Ayyub poured himself a goblet of wine and sipped it meditatively. “What of your slave and his mission to the savages in the boats?” he inquired.

“Grond reached the island unobserved,” said Yussef. “He has yet to return and report on the success of his embassy. What of the captain, Moustapha?”

Ayyub grinned. “When the world next wakes, he will be gone from El-Cazar! I have this from the lips of his first mate, Abu.…”

“And when he returns to El-Cazar,” purred Yussef silkenly, “it will be to find that he has a new monarch.…”

“Aye,” grunted Zodeen, rubbing his paunch. “Yussef ben Ali, cousin to Kâiradine, will reign as eighth successor to the throne of the mighty Khair ud-Din Barbarossa!”

Yussef smiled.

* * * *

The pirates of El-Cazar, having more recently come to the Underground World than the Neanderthal or Cro-Magnon tribes, retained a memory of day and night denied their contemporaries. Thus, even though the eternal afternoon of Zanthodon does not darken into night or brighten into day, they are accustomed to sleep and wake at measured intervals.

That “night,” then, while the palace of Kâiradine slept, Darya of Thandar remained awake. The slim blade which Zoraida’s confederate had tossed at her feet was the key the cavegirl needed to secure her freedom from the harem of Kâiradine. Its keen and razory steel had cut through the carven screen which effectively barred the window of Darya’s suite. During the remainder of the last wake, the Cro-Magnon girl had carefully propped the portion of the screen which she had cut through, holding it into place with threads unraveled from her garments.

Once she was certain that the palace slept, the girl arose from her couch and crossed to the window. From beneath a heap of cushions she extracted the garments she had stolen from a servant’s washbasket; unlike the rich finery in which Kâiradine had draped her, the garments she had chosen were plain and worn. She had deliberately selected these with the thought of making herself inconspicuous in the street, if she were indeed fortunate enough to escape from the palace.

Swiftly changing her clothes, the Cro-Magnon girl detached the portion of the screen which she had cut free and slid through the opening, pulling the screen into place behind her in order to baffle pursuit.

A thick tangle of vines grew outside her window, clinging tenaciously to the wall. Clambering down this, Darya vanished into the thick shrubbery of the little walled garden. It was simplicity itself for the lithe cavegirl to scale the wall.

With beating heart, she slid to the ground beyond the wall. And found herself in the street beyond the palace—and free.

CHAPTER 13

COUNCIL OF THE CAPTAINS

Kâiradine Redbeard was in a vile and vicious temper. No sooner had he arisen from his rest than servants informed him that Yussef ben Ali and Zodeen the Algerian had arrived at the palace to demand that their prince convene a Council of the Captains. This was a confrontation which the Redbeard had been avoiding all during his convalescence, hungrily awaiting the return of his full strength and the restoration of his swordarm to its normal fighting vigor. And was it now to be forced upon him—?

“Send the dogs away to whine before another kennel!” the Prince of El-Cazar growled irritably. “Know they not that it requires a clear majority of the captains to convene the council against the wishes of their prince? And two captains together make no majority, for we be five in all, by Allah!”

His servant bowed humbly, touching his brow in the
salaam
. “Alas, O master, the lords would seem to have anticipated thine argument,” he whispered. “They argue that within the hour the lord Moustapha hath departed from EI-Cazar on a voyage to the north, leaving the captains in residence numbering but four—and that, according to the Articles of Brotherhood, in the absence of one member, half of the captains may force their prince to yield to a council summons—”

With a roar of wrath, the Redbeard kicked his servant full in the chest, driving him from the sleeping chamber.

“By the Fiery Beard of Shaitan, Yussef goes too far!” swore Kâiradine, kicking back the bedclothes as his frightened servant scuttled from the room. Rapping a brass gong to summon his valet, the Prince of Pirates knuckled the sleep from his eyes and loudly demanded that his best finery be laid out.

Munching ripe fruit and drinking unmixed wine, he moodily permitted his valet to adorn his body in an open-throated blouse of scarlet silk with voluminous sleeves caught at the wrist by silver buttons, tight trousers of bottle-green velvet, and black boots with up-curled toes, worked all over with arabesques of silver thread. A sash of mustard-yellow cloth wound about his lean Waist completed the costume.

Almost as an afterthought, Kâiradine Redbeard belted on his swordbelt—selecting, neither scimitar nor cutlass, but a slender French epée.

While attiring himself, Kâiradine had issued orders that messengers were to be dispatched to the houses of the only captain remaining in the fortress isle, the lean and crafty Ayyub whom he still counted among his friends. Then Kâiradine stomped off to the Chamber of the Council, trying to ignore the forebodings of disaster and doom which gnawed upon his heart.

He had a grim feeling that he would somehow rue this day. And in his heart he vowed that Yussef ben Ali would have great and good cause to rue it, too.…

* * * *

The Chamber of the Council was circular and high-roofed, with a long table of fine old wood, black with age, about which sat five high-backed chairs of the same ancient wood, upholstered in the Frankish fashion with red velvet.

When Kâiradine stalked in, the others were already assembled in their places. Fat Zodeen, his bulk swatched in a loose Moorish robe like a kaftan of yellow satin, was gnawing on a greasy haunch of meat, his bushy beard dripping hot gravy. Yussef, slim as a panther in close-fitting black velvet which clothed him from throat to wrist and heel, lounged lazily, fingering a giant ruby that smoldered in his left earlobe like a pulsing coal. A little apart from these two cronies sat Ayyub, solemn and saturnine, soberly attired in turban, cummerbund, and long-sleeved robes of dark wool.

They greeted him coolly, even warily, as he stalked in and flung himself into his great chair at the head of the long table. He glowered wrathfully on one and all, seeking to intimidate them with his very evident fury. If Yussef ben Ali was at all taken aback to see his chief—hitherto reputedly an invalid, virtually bedridden—in such high temper and lordly vigor, his suave features concealed it well.

Slamming the table with his balled right fist—making the wine cups jump—Kâiradine demanded the reason why they had forced this council upon him. Yussef thoughtfully observed that gesture…was it not the right shoulder which had been so frightfully maimed by the fanged jaws of the monstrous yith? Surely, it was: had, then, the unpredictable Kâiradine Redbeard already recovered his full use of that arm?

Belching loudly, wiping his greasy lips on a scarlet kerchief, Zodeen the Algerian began the attack, having been carefully coached in his speech by the wily Yussef.

“In the name of the Brotherhood of El-Cazar,” he rumbled in his bull-chested voice, “I, Zodeen Ahmmad Zelim Khan declare the Prince and Captain Kâiradine Barbarossa, Seventh of That Name, incompetent to command the fortunes of El-Cazar!”

Kâiradine crushed down the hot flame that arose within him, and his eyes narrowed even as his lips whitened. “On what grounds doth the Captain Zodeen lodge this complaint?” he inquired with dangerous softness. Zodeen shifted his massive bulk uncomfortably in his chair, shooting a surreptitious glance in Yussef’s direction. He cleared his throat with a cough.

“That he hath become besotted with a savage girl seized upon the mainland, thus throwing all of the Brotherhood into immediate peril,” announced the fat corsair pompously.

Kâiradine smiled thinly. “Such eloquence from one hitherto largely given to coarse oaths implies careful coaching from another,” he observed, with a venomous look at Yussef ben Ali, who smiled calmly but said nothing.

The Algerian flushed to the roots of his beard, then blustered: “Answer the charge or yield to a successor—”

“That successor being none other than the honorable Captain, Yussef ben Ali, I suppose?” inquired Kâiradine mockingly.

Zodeen doggedly shook his head. “Answer the charge!”

“Very well. As to my dealings with my own women, that lieth between my soul and the eyes of heaven,” snarled Kâiradine. “But in no wise have my actions in this regard incurred peril to the Brotherhood, and he who says so is a dog-livered liar—”

At that very moment, Achmed the Moor burst into the Chamber, hurling aside the Nubians who guarded its portal with drawn scimitars.

“To arms, my captains!” he blurted. “The streets are infested by a howling horde of blond savages, demanding the return of the wench, Darya!”

Kâiradine swore, paled, and rose to his feet to confront Yussef ben Ali.

“This is your doing, you snake-tongued dog!” he hissed, half-drawing his sword from its scabbard. Yussef rose lithely erect and their eyes locked in a long moment of silence.

Zodeen demanded of Achmed how in the name of Shaitan the savages had breeched the defensive wall of the fortress isle. The Moor shook his head gloomily.

“There was a long-unused sea-door which gave forth on an abandoned quay at the foot of the Street of Wineshops,” he made melancholy reply. “Somehow, the savages found it unbarred, the hinges recently oiled.…”

“
Treason!
” hissed Kâiradine Redbeard. Yussef smiled blandly, spreading his hands with an eloquent shrug.

“The charges leveled by our brother Zodeen would seem, however, to have been proven,” he said silkenly. “By capturing this girl, our prince has brought down upon us the vengeance of her tribe!”

“How could you not have anticipated this danger, O Kâiradine, my prince?” inquired Ayyub in heavy tones. The Redbeard looked baffled.

“I had no knowledge that her tribe was pursuing us—” he faltered. Yussef pounced.

“—Thereby demonstrating your unfitness to lead the Brotherhood,” snapped the man in black velvet.

“I have heard enough,” said Ayyub in somber tones. “The charge brought against Kâiradine Seventh is proven. I cast my vote that he be dethroned and the princely title bestowed upon his cousin—”

“Not while I live!” yelled the Redbeard. And in the next instant, he flung himself across the table upon Yussef, strong hands seizing the other’s throat. The chair in which Yussef had been sitting went over backwards with a crash and the two men, snarling and spitting like cats, writhed on the floor in a tangle of kicking limbs.

* * * *

Beyond the wall, Darya found the street all but deserted at this hour. Nevertheless, drawing the cloth of her headdress across her face to conceal her visage from any prying eyes, the cavegirl crept into the shadows of a striped awning. Hidden in the shadows, she peered around her fearfully…the worst thing was, she had no idea in which direction to go or where she might best seek a safe haven.

Darya knew that the moment her escape was noticed and the alarm given, the chase would be yapping at her heels. Kâiradine Redbeard was not the sort of man to yield supinely to fate—not when his desires were so strongly engaged. No, the Prince of the Barbary Pirates would pursue her to the farthest corners of Zanthodon; but, for the moment, she was safe, as it would be some considerable time before her absence was discovered. During that respite, she must find a place to hide or a means to escape from the pirate isle entirely.…

A narrow opening yawned in the walls beyond the palace, the black mouth of an alley from which panted the fetid stench of rotting garbage and excrement. Wrinkling her nostrils fastidiously against the effluvium, which struck her with the impact of a blow, the girl gathered up her courage and slunk into the blackness of that narrow way. Freedom, she knew, lay in the harbor, for there was no escape from the island of El-Cazar except by sea, and where many boats lie tied at anchor, one mayhap will not be missed.…

She had not gone far before strong hands seized her and a wadded cloth choked off the cry which rose to her lips involuntarily. Peering back over her shoulder she was astonished to find herself staring into the grinning visage of none other than Fumio—!