As the eyes of the jong of Morov fell upon me he recognized me, and
he voiced a sardonic laugh as he whipped out his sword and brought my
charge to a sudden, ignominious stop--one does not finish a charge with
the point of a sword in one's belly.
"So!" he exclaimed; "it is you? Well, well. It is good to see you
again. I did not expect to be so honored. I thought Fortune had been
very kind to me when she returned the two young women. And now you have
come! What a merry party we shall have!"
With the last words his tone, which had been sarcastically bantering,
changed; he fairly hissed that gay sentence. And the expression on his
face changed too. It became suddenly malevolent, and his eyes glittered
with the same mad fire of insanity that I had seen there before.
Behind him stood Duare, her wide eyes fixed upon me with incredulity
mixed with terror. "Oh, why did you come, Carson?" she cried. "Now he
will kill you."
"I will tell you why he came," said Skor. "He came for the other girl,
for Nalte, not for you. You have been here a long time, but he did not
come. To-night one of my people seized the girl, Nalte, in Havatoo; and
he came immediately to try to rescue her, the fool. I have known for
a long time that they were in Havatoo. My spies have seen them there
together. I do not know how he got here, but here he is--and here he
stays, forever."
He poked me in the belly with the point of his sword. "How would you
like to die, fool?" he snarled. "A quick thrust through the heart,
perhaps. That would mutilate you least. You will make a fine specimen.
Come, now, what have you to say? Remember this will be the last chance
you will have to think with your own brain; hereafter I shall do your
thinking for you. You will sit in my banquet hall, and you will laugh
when I tell you to laugh. You will see the two women who loved you, but
they will shrink from the touch of your clammy hands, from your cold,
dead lips. And whenever you see them they will be with Skor in whose
veins flows the bright blood of life."
My plight seemed quite hopeless. The sword at my belly was long, keen,
and two-edged. I might have grasped it, but its edges were so sharp
that it would have slipped through my fingers, severing them as it
plunged into my body. Yet that I intended doing. I would not wait like
a sheep the lethal blow of the butcher.
"You do not reply," said Skor. "Very well, we will have it over
quickly!" He drew back his sword hand for the thrust.
Duare was standing just behind him beside a table littered with the
sort of junk to which Skor seemed partial--his crazy _objets d'art_.
I was waiting to seize the blade when he thrust. Skor hesitated a
moment, I presume to better enjoy my final agony; but in that he was
disappointed. I would not give him that satisfaction; and so, to rob
him of most of his pleasure, I laughed in his face.
At that moment Duare raised a heavy vase from the table, held it high
above her, and crashed it down on Skor's head. Without a sound he sank
to the floor.
I leaped across his body to take Duare into my arms, but with a palm
against my breast she pushed me away.
"Do not touch me!" she snapped. "If you want to get out of Kormor there
is no time to be wasted. Come with me! I know where the girl you came
to rescue is imprisoned."
* * * * *
Her whole attitude toward me seemed to have changed, and my pride was
piqued. In silence I followed her from the room. She led me into the
corridor along which we had approached the room to which I had followed
her and Skor. Opening a door at one side, she hurried along another
corridor and stopped before a heavily bolted door.
"She is in here," she said.
I drew the bolts and opened the door. Standing in the middle of the
room beyond, looking straight at me, was Nalte. As she recognized me
she gave a little cry of joy and, running toward me, threw her arms
about me.
"Oh, Carson! Carson!" she cried. "I knew that you would come; something
told me that you would surely come."
"We must hurry," I told her. "We must get out of here."
I turned toward the door. Duare stood there, her chin in the air, her
eyes flashing; but she said nothing. Nalte saw her then and recognized
her. "Oh, it is you!" she exclaimed. "You are alive! I am so glad. We
thought that you had been killed."
Duare seemed puzzled by the evident sincerity of Nalte's manner, as
though she had not expected that Nalte would be glad that she was
alive. She softened a little. "If we are to escape from Kormor, though
I doubt that we can, we must not remain here," she said. "I think that
I know a way out of the castle--a secret way that Skor uses. He showed
me the door once during some strange mood of his insanity; but he has
the key to the door on his person, and we must get that before we can
do anything else."
We returned to the room where we had left Skor's body, and as I entered
it I saw the jong of Morov stir and try to rise. He was not dead,
though how he had survived that shattering blow I do not know.
I ran toward him and threw him down. He was still only half conscious
and made little or no resistance. I suppose I should have killed him,
but I shrank from killing a defenseless man--even a fiend like Skor.
Instead I bound and gagged him; then I searched him and found his keys.
After that Duare led us to the second floor of the palace and to a
large room furnished in the bizarre taste that was Skor's. She crossed
the apartment and drew aside a grotesque hanging, revealing a small
door behind it.
"Here is the door," she said; "see if you can find a key to fit the
lock."
I tried several keys, and at last found the right one. The opened
door revealed a narrow corridor which we entered after rearranging
the hangings, and then closed the door behind us. A few steps brought
us to the top of a spiral staircase. I went first, carrying Skor's
sword which I had taken from him with his keys. The two girls followed
closely behind me.
The stairway was lighted, for which I was glad, since it permitted us
to move more rapidly and with greater safety. At the bottom was another
corridor. I waited there until both girls stood beside me.
"Do you know where this corridor leads?" I asked Duare.
"No," she replied. "All that Skor said was that he could get out of the
castle this way without any one seeing him--he always came and went
this way. Practically everything that he did, the most commonplace
things in life, he veiled with mystery and secrecy."
"From the height of that stairway," I said, "I believe that we are
below the ground level of the palace. I wish that we knew where this
corridor ends, but there is only one way to find out. Come on!"
* * * * *
This corridor was but dimly illuminated by the light from the stairway,
and the farther we went from the stairway the darker it became. It ran
straight for a considerable distance, ending at the foot of a wooden
stairway. Up this I groped my way only a few steps, when my head came
in contact with a solid substance above me. I reached up and felt of
the obstruction. It consisted of planking and was obviously a trap
door. I tried to raise it, but could not. Then I searched around its
edges with my fingers, and at last I found that which I sought--a
latch. Tripping it, I pushed again; and the door gave. I opened it only
an inch or two, but no light showed in the crack. Then I opened it
wider and raised my head through the aperture.
Now I could see more, but not much more--only the dark interior of a
room with a single small window through which the night light of Amtor
showed dimly. Grasping the sword of the jong of Morov more tightly, I
ascended the stairway and entered the room. I heard no sound.
The girls had followed me and now stood just behind me. I could hear
them breathing. We stood waiting, listening. Slowly my eyes became
accustomed to the darkness, and I made out what I thought was a door
beside the single window. I crossed to it and felt; it was a door.
Cautiously I opened it and looked out into one of the sordid streets
of Kormor. I peered about in an effort to orient myself and saw that
the street was one of those that extended directly away from the palace
which I could see looming darkly behind its wall at my right.
"Come!" I whispered, and with the girls behind me I stepped out into
the street and turned to the left. "If we meet any one," I cautioned,
"remember to walk like the dead, shuffle along as you will see me do.
Keep your eyes on the ground; it is our eyes that will most surely
betray us."
"Where are we going?" asked Duare in a whisper.
"I am going to try to find the house through which I came into the
city," I replied; "but I don't know that I can do so."
"And if you can't?"
"Then we shall have to make an attempt to scale the city wall; but we
shall find a way, Duare."
"What difference will it make?" she murmured, half to herself. "If we
escape from here there will only be something else. I think I would
rather be dead than go on any more."
The note of hopelessness in her voice was so unlike Duare that it
shocked me. "You mustn't feel like that, Duare," I expostulated. "If
we can get back to Havatoo you will be safe and happy, and I have a
surprise there for you that will give you new hope." I was thinking of
the plane in which we might hope to find Vepaja, the country that I
could see she had about despaired of ever seeing again.
She shook her head. "There is no hope, no hope of happiness, ever, for
Duare."
Some figures approaching us along the dusty street put an end to our
conversation. With lowered eyes and shuffling feet we neared them.
They passed, and I breathed again in relief.
It would be useless to recount our futile search for the house I could
not find. All the remainder of the night we searched, and with the
coming of dawn I realized that we must find a place to hide until night
came again.
I saw a house with a broken door, no unusual sight in dismal Kormor;
and investigation indicated that it was tenantless. We entered and
ascended to the second floor. Here, in a back room, we prepared to
await the ending of the long day that lay ahead of us.
We were all tired, almost exhausted; and so we lay down on the rough
planks and sought to sleep. We did not talk; each seemed occupied with
his own dismal thoughts. Presently, from their regular breathing, I
realized that the girls were both asleep; and very shortly thereafter I
must have fallen asleep myself.
* * * * *
How long I slept I do not know. I was awakened by footsteps in an
adjoining room. Some one was moving about, and I heard mutterings as of
a person talking to himself.
Slowly I rose to my feet, holding Skor's sword in readiness. Its
uselessness against the dead did not occur to me, yet had it, I still
would have felt safer with the sword in my hand.
The footsteps approached the door to the room in which we had sought
sanctuary, and a moment later an old woman stopped upon the threshold
and looked at me in astonishment.
"What are you doing here?" she demanded.
If she was surprised, no less was I; for old age was something I had
never before seen in Amtor. Her voice awakened the girls, and I heard
them rising to their feet behind me.
"What are you doing here?" repeated the old woman querulously. "Get out
of my house, accursed corpses! I'll have none of the spawn of Skor's
evil brain in my house!"