The Zanthodon MEGAPACK ™: The Complete 5-Book Series (64 page)

Certainly not just to impress a painted temptress like Zarys of Zar.…

I shook my head. Whether or not the gesture is understood in the Scarlet City, she must have been able to read the answer in my face.

She tapped her fingers on the carven arm of the couch, studying me meditatively.

“I could have you whipped, or beaten,” she remarked.

“So you could,” I growled.

“Why are you so stubborn?”

I had to laugh, although it came out more like a snarl.

“A few minutes ago you were praising me for being uncompromising,” I reminded her. “Now you want to whip me for being uncompromising. Doesn’t make much sense to me!”

She must have agreed with me, in spite of herself, for a mischievous twinkle shone in the depths of her eyes, and the corners of her lips twitched in a brief half-smile.

“Well…we shall discuss these and other matters further, at a later time,” drawled the Empress lazily, stretching like a cat and putting away the automatic—very carefully, I noticed.

Ialys rose to her feet and led me from the chamber that was like a hollowed pearl.

I was almost trembling with exhaustion from that interview, but somehow I had gotten away with it.

Maybe the Divine Zarys rather liked to be faced up to and denied something…after all, it must have been a novel experience for her!

* * * *

At first, Jorn fell like a stone, turning end over end: The speed of his descent was such that the wind tore the breath from his lungs, and the boy knew that long before he could be hurtled to death against the rocky floor beneath he would likely perish of suffocation.

To hurl from a height to dash your brains out against jagged rocks is a cruel death, to be sure. But to die as young as Jorn the Hunter, with most of your life still ahead of you in the womb of the unborn future, is doubly cruel.…

The wind whipped his eyes savagely, making them water. Squinting against the gale, Jorn suddenly spied the glimmer of a mysterious blueness beneath him, as the floor of the plain came rushing up toward him—

Then the sheer instinct for survival took over.

He extended his legs behind him, pressing them together. He pointed his arms over his head, hands pressed palm to palm. And what had been a whirling fall turned into a perfect dive.

Cold water struck him a numbing blow. He cleaved the surface, stunned from the impact, and touched the muddy bottom of the little mountain lake that had broken his fall.

The icy shock of the water about him roused him from his state of momentary unconsciousness. Kicking against the lake bottom, he floundered clumsily back to the surface again.

All about him, heavy boulders fell, churning the surface of the lake into exploding froth.

Sucking air into starved lungs, he dove again, and swam toward the nearest shore. To every side, rocks sank through the muddy water. One grazed his shoulder, another scraped against his leg. But luckily, the impact of striking the lake surface had broken the fall of the rocks as it had broken his, and they sank through the water too slowly for these collisions to do him any particular harm.

He dragged himself out upon a rocky shelf and lay there, gasping for breath.

He felt pummeled and bruised, and he ached in every muscle known to anatomy. Groggy, shaken; boneweary—yet, miraculously, he still lived!

* * * *

After a brief rest, Jorn felt much recovered from his narrow scrape with doom.

The hot, humid air of Zanthodon dried his flesh and warmed the chill from his bones. He had taken no injury from his fall into the lake, although a split second one way or another and the impact could easily have snapped his spine or broken his legs.

Fortune seemed to be smiling upon Jorn the Hunter.

When he felt better enough to move, the boy looked around, taking stock of his situation.

All of his weapons had been lost in the fall; he retained nothing of his accouterments but the scrap of fur wound about his loins, the thong which bound the loin-covering to his lean waist, and his sandals.

Above him, lifted the mountain. Jorn groaned within him at the thought of attempting to climb that height again, especially in his present bruised and shaken condition. Food would do much to restore him to his full strength and alertness, but where could he find anything to kill, here in this rocky wilderness among the foothills?

He headed out upon the grassy plains, having found a sharp splinter of rock, hoping to make a lucky kill.

Instead, he saw someone who was about the last person in all the world whom he could have expected to see.…

CHAPTER 18

THE CUNNING OF XASK

One moment Yualla was sound asleep, deep in the innocent slumbers of the young and healthy—the next instant she was shocked awake. To find herself crushed under the panting weight of Murg!

The scrawny little man writhed atop her, striving with one hand to pin her wrists above her head while with his other hand he fumbled, pawing at her naked breasts, with his hot breath searing her face as his slobbering lips sought her mouth.

The girl was frightened, and amazed. Rape was not a crime unknown to her primitive society, but it was a rare one, truly. The tribe of Sothar was small and inbred so that nearly every male was related, however distantly, to nearly every female—cousins, second and third cousins, and so on. And in nearly every society known to man, incest has been the most loathsome and despicable of crimes.

Yualla, however, remained frozen by shock and surprise for moments only. The gasping, grunting creature which wriggled atop her, clawing at the brief garment about her loins, was thin and scrawny. And he was no fighting man, was Murg. So—

Writhing to one side, turning her head away from Murg’s foul-breathed kisses, the lithe jungle girl raised one leg sharply between the legs of her assailant. Her smoothly muscled thigh caught him a shrewd blow in the crotch—and, in the same instant, her pointed elbow struck the little man in the breast, just below the heart, where a cluster of ganglia lie which are extremely sensitive.

Murg voiced a strangled yelp. His face turned the unwholesome hue of dirty milk. Gagging and retching, he fell aside, clutching himself and moaning in sick pain. For a time he was unable to do aught else but roll about the grassy ground, grasping at his injured parts and groaning at the well-nigh intolerable pain.

Erelong, when he was sufficiently recovered from the girl’s blows to become cognizant of his surroundings once again, he peered up to see Yualla standing alertly near, her clear eyes fierce with cold fury, her lovely features hard and grim. And in her tanned, capable hands she held her hunting bow, a long arrow nocked and pointed unwaveringly at his heart.

“M-mercy, my Princess!” he babbled, thoroughly frightened and fearing his death was impending. “Forgive poor, crazed Murg, whom your beauty has driven mad—but only for a moment!” he added hastily, as the thought struck him that the jungle girl might well decide to put him out of his misery if she truly believed him crazed.

“Murg knew very well what he was attempting to do,” said the girl in level tones, eyes hard and unforgiving. “And Murg knows very well what Yualla’s sire, the mighty Garth, would do to him in punishment for his daring to put his dirty paws upon the person of the gomad of Sothar—”

Murg thought about that for a moment, remembering the burly shoulders and deep chest and massive thews of the High Chief. And he licked dry lips uneasily, shuddering at the thought of the terrible vengeance Garth would extract from his hide.

“Do not kill poor Murg,” he babbled fearfully. “Make him your slave, merciful lady, to fetch and carry for you, to toil and labor, and to fight valiantly in your behalf.…”

At that, Yualla had trouble repressing a smile. The very thought of Murg, that whining and treacherous little coward, doing anything in a fight besides trying to run away from it, brought the element of humor into the situation.

“Very well, perhaps, after all, Yualla will permit the miserable Murg to live a little longer,” the girl said, beginning to relent a little. “Turn over on your face and put your hands together behind your back.”

“The beautiful Princess would not slay poor old Murg from behind, surely?” whimpered the little man cautiously.

She shook her head, blond mane tousling about bare, tanned shoulders. “Not I; but Yualla can hardly trust Murg unless his hands are bound. Now, do as I say, or we shall end this matter here and now, and the grass of the plains will drink the thin, weak blood of the cowardly Murg!”

Hastily, Murg rolled over and pressed his face into the meadow grass, while Yualla knelt and bound his wrists together in the small of his back, using a spare bowstring in lieu of a rope of woven grass. Then she kicked him to his feet.

“Now we shall continue on our way, as Yualla no longer feels the need of sleep, and the quicker we traverse the distance between this place and the mountains, the sooner we shall join the warriors of Sothar and Thandar who search for Eric Carstairs,” she said.

And without further speech, she set off over the plain, in rapid, long-legged stride, without looking back. The unhappy Murg must perforce scramble to his feet and trot along after her; nor did he dare whine or complain about the pace which she had set. For were she to abandon him here like this, bound and helpless and without any weapon, he would fall prey to the first monstrous predator who came his way.

* * * *

Speaking of Murg reminds me of that other wily and cunning traitor, Xask, former vizier of Kor and exile of the Scarlet City. The differences between the two men are only a matter of degree, save that Xask was far more clever than Murg, and less tempted by lust, and certainly no coward.

Both Xask and Murg were driven by self-interest, but Xask was willing to take great risks to attain the power he sought, while Murg simply hungered for a safe, snug life without danger. To have placed himself once again within the power of Zar was a hazardous and dangerous risk, but it was one which Xask had gladly taken, for the stakes were high. No sooner had he been brought within the palacecitadel which crowned the heights of the island-city, than Xask sought a private audience with the Empress who had condemned him to outlawry and exile. Curious as to what had impelled him to return to the kingdom which he was forbidden to enter upon pain of execution, Zarys permitted the interview.

She listened dubiously to his fantastic account of the powers of the thunder-weapon, and, with great skepticism, to his protestations of loyalty. Women such as Zarys are not likely to be taken in by men such as Xask, and the two thoroughly understood one another. It did not seem to Zarys that Xask could possibly be lying about the titanic power of the weapon, for his claim could swiftly be exposed as a lie by a simple demonstration. Therefore, his claims as to its effectiveness must, after all, be true, no matter how fantastic they might sound.

Zarys knew exactly what Xask hoped to gain by delivering the secret of the thunder-weapon into her hands: he hoped to regain in full the power and authority which he had lost when his plots against her throne had been exposed. Having enjoyed the ultimate in power since she was a child, Zarys knew very well what a heady intoxicant it was, and she was more than willing to restore Xask to his former position of influence if he could, indeed, render up the secret of the weapon.

Power and authority and influence with the throne—these are the payments whereby queens purchase the service of intelligent and gifted men. But this time, Zarys determined to keep a careful watch on Xask. There would be no more plots against her, not a second time.

The two understood each other perfectly. Xask, given the freedom of the palace, wasted no time in seeking out the sumptuous apartments where Professor Potter and Eric Carstairs had been lodged. He found only the Professor in residence, for I was then awaiting my own private audience with Her Nibs.

The scrawny scientist was reclining blissfully on a couch strewn with silken stuffs, nibbling on grapes, while giggling slave girls trimmed and perfumed his stiff little spike of snowy beard and the wisps which fringed his balding dome, buffed his fingernails, and shaved his lean, bestubbled cheeks. Professor Potter seemed to be enjoying himself hugely; but, then, after weeks and months spent tramping through the jungles, crawling through noisome caverns, sloshing about in swamps, and otherwise enduring the discomforts of the wilderness life, why shouldn’t a few of the amenities of civilization have pleased him?

Xask wasted no time in getting directly to the point. The wily Zarian knew almost by instinct when to be threatening, when to be conciliatory, and when to appeal to reason. On this occasion, he assumed the outward trappings of complete honesty, somewhat leavened with urgency and directness.

“I know that you and your friend dislike me and distrust me,” he began, for he could read the older man’s suspicions in the distrustful gaze with which the Professor examined him. “And, in all truth, my friend, we have been at odds in the past. Now, however, our interests coincide, and I must admit to a certain guiltiness. It is not impossible that, had I not interfered with you and Eric Carstairs, neither of you would presently find yourselves immured in this silken dungeon.”

“I am glad to hear you have the honesty to admit to your treacheries,” sniffed the Professor. “But I have no reason to presume that the leopard has changed his spots—oh, you know what I mean!—and I warn you, my friend, that you will not find Percival P. Potter, Ph.D., as easy to befool as you found Fumio and One-Eye—!”

“I am certain of that,” said Xask, his beautiful orator’s voice ringing with sincerity. “For I well know that, in your native land, wherever that may be, you are recognized as a great savant, revered for his wisdom and his scholarly attainments.”

I suppose the Professor would not have been completely human had he not relaxed a little at this point, basking in praise which, to be frank, he believed honestly earned. Xask pressed on, sensing his momentary advantage.

“It was, as you know, my intention to obtain from yourself and your fine young friend the secrets of the thunder-weapon so as to present them before the throne of the Divine Zarys,” he said. “What you do not, however, realize, is my reason for wishing to obtain those secrets. You will have assumed, I am afraid, that it was simple greed and the cold ambition which leads to the lust for power.”

“Well, ah, to be honest.…”

“Nothing could be further from the truth!” declared Xask. “I am a patriot, sir! My one desire is to serve my Empress, and my fellow countrymen, and to preserve them from danger and destruction, inasmuch as it is within my power to do so. Here you see a dying people of dwindling power who have attained to the superior heights of urban civilization, although ringed about with savages and terrible beasts. The warlike spirit of our conquering ancestors has long ago deserted us; our legions weaken, not only in numbers but in morale and fighting skills. It is the thunder-weapon and the thunder-weapon alone which may sustain us, in a hostile and savage world.”

“Um,” said the Professor.

“I assume that the level of your civilization is superior to our own,” said Xask cunningly. “For to invent such a device as the thunder-weapon presupposes an advanced culture of great artisans and scholars and philosophers. But I somehow feel inwardly convinced that your people are only more advanced in
degree
above my own, and that we are not all that terribly far behind you: tell me, sir, am I not close to the truth?”