I sighed, but realized the rightness of her dictates. Indeed, there was no other way. The love between us would, in time, be consummated within the standards of decency and honor whereby we lived, not before. Until that happy hour, a soft word—a fleeting caress—a touch of the lips—nothing more could pass between us.
One barrier between us had fallen; another had been built.
And there was another cause for the estrangement which rose between us, following our mutual declarations of love.
I have no apt name for the thing which parted us. Perhaps it was so simple a thing as guilt; a sense of the betrayal of vows, a feeling of shame. Whatever you call it, it was stronger than a barrier of stone or steel.
In her native city of Kamadhong, Shann my beloved had given her love to a mighty warrior among her people. That was not very long ago, I understood. The youth to whom she had given her heart was dead, struck down by a foeman before her very eyes.
But in her heart his name and image still stood inviolable, unshaken. Not yet had she forgotten his valor and gallantry, or the sound of his voice. She spoke of this very little or not at all; intuition supplied me with the details of her cruel loss and her present dilemma.
That she loved me she could not deny; but that the knowledge of her love caused her guilt and shame was equally undeniable. Time had not yet healed the wound on her heart. She had not yet forgotten her emotion for the man whose name I never learned; in time, perhaps, she would forget him and could love me openly, freely, without a sense of guilt. She felt her betrayal of the memory of one dear and precious to her.
I understood her reticence on this subject completely. For I, too, had given my love to another; and the same guilt knifed through my heart at the very thought of Niamh.
Niamh! Niamh! Niamh the Fair—Oh, my lost beloved, where are you now! Do you yet live in some far corner of the world? Can you ever forgive my lack of faithfulness to your memory?
These words welled up in my heart as I lay in sleepless torment on my pallet, listening to the murmur of the jungle night. How I despised myself for yielding to an emotion once reserved for the flower-like beauty of the Princess of Phaolon; now irrevocably given to the young girl with whom Fate had thrown me together.
How I loathed myself for falling in love with Shann! And yet, I was helpless to oppose the stormy tempest of emotion which swept me from my adoration of Niamh with irresistible force. It hurled me, a faithless suppliant, at the feet of another—of a girl whose face I had never seen!
Yet I was helpless to fight the love that sprang up so swiftly between us in our jungle Eden. The very sound of her voice awoke a resonance in my heart, which echoed through the innermost secret chambers of my soul. It was as if I had known Shann forever, and needed only to meet her at last, for all other memories and loves to be swept from my heart…
I could not resist falling in love with Shann; but I could not resist the sensation of shame and guilt which tormented me because of my unfaithfulness in loving her.
Our nameless isle became, then, Eden in very truth. For we had discovered our Serpent to torture us, in the memory of our lost loves betrayed.
Our life continued much as it had in the days before I slew the bison-boar beside the pool in the glade.
We cooked shellfish, ate fresh fruits, nuts and berries; Shann scrambled nimbly about the rocks to bring back bird’s eggs. I erected a thornbush barrier around our but to keep the predatory beasts at bay, although in simple fact the island seemed remarkably, free of dangerous creatures.
We talked lightly on subjects which bore no relation to our private agonies. She never spoke of her dead lover or of her former life in distant Kamadhong; I said not a word of Niamh the Fair, nor of my remarkable adventures in searching for my lost beloved. We talked only of future things, and then wistfully.
The idyll ended as suddenly and mysteriously as it had begun. I was within the jungle, fashioning a stone knife to the end of a pole with which I planned to knock down some ripe fruit her keen eyes had spied, growing on the high branches of a tree. She was some distance away, gathering shellfish on the beach.
I heard her cry out suddenly.
There was surprise and wonder in her voice; it was not a scream of terror. Therefore, I did not at once stop what I was doing to hurry to her side, I merely called to inquire the cause of her exclamation.
I recall her next words as if they had been spoken only yesterday. They were the last words I was ever to hear from the lips of Shann my darling …
“An air-vessel!” she cried in amazement. “It is descending to the beach!”
My first thought was that it could be none other than the skysled, wherein my friends Prince Janchan and Zarqa the Kalood had borne the Goddess Arjala and Niamh the Fair. They left the burning temple of Ardha for the unknown darkness, never to be seen by me again.
I almost opened my lips to ask her if such indeed it was. But then I closed them again, upon the realization that Shann had never seen the skysled; she knew nothing of my former comrades, whose names I never had any reason to even mention to her.
“I am coming,” I called.
Putting down my half-finished tool, I rose from my knees and headed in the direction of the beach, which was only yards away.
A blind man cannot move swiftly through a dense tropical jungle. Thus it was that, even though I had used this route many times before, I went slowly, haltingly; fumbling to feel my way. I moved towards the beach with tragic slowness, as grim hindsight tells me now; at the time, however, I was half-convinced that it was my friends, somehow come to search for me, who were then landing on the beach.
And then Shann screamed, this time in sheer naked terror!
I ran, crashing and stumbling through the trees; tripping over roots my sightless eyes could not see, hurtling in the direction of her voice.
I broke from the edge of the jungle to hear her calling me wildly. But her voice sounded from above me, blurred amidst the whirring of engines. As I stared about in my blindness, her dear voice receded swiftly into the distance of the upper air, and I heard—no more. Nothing but the lazy slosh and slap of waves against the shore, and the brisk wind rattling the palm-like fronds of the trees.
I called and wept, stumbling about the beach. I cursed my blinded eyes with all the bitterness in my heart—eyes that could not even see what had become of her whom I loved.
And now I was alone… unable even to see the thing that had carried her off, or the direction in which it had flown.
Part IV.
THE BOOK OF PARIMUS THE WIZARD
Chapter 16.
THE DECISION OF PARIMUS
The prince of Tharkoon willingly granted audience to the mariners once the recaptured Xothun had docked, and Prince Andar had presented his credentials to the harbor guards. Despite his tattered and scanty raiment and whip-scarred back, it was not difficult for Andar to prove his rank and station; for princes of the Komarian royal house are tattooed with an heraldic device at birth, this dynastic emblem being situated upon the breast.
Parimus of Tharkoon was an elderly man; tall and lean, kingly and commanding, attired in glittering and splendid robes of gilt brocade sewn with flashing gems. His lofty brow denoted superior intelligence, his silver herd the majesty of age; and his jade-green eyes were keen, alert, observant and sympathetic as he listened to Andar’s incredible tale in his great hall of audience.
“I was not unaware, Prince Andar, of the calamity which has befallen your unhappy island realm; neither am I indifferent to the potential menace the Blue Barbarians afford the safety of my own kingdom,” the Wizard said thoughtfully, upon the conclusion of the Komarian’s statements. “The death or disappearance of the Warlord of the savage Horde, early last year, gave me cause to hope that the Barbarians would collapse; torn apart by internal rivalries, unable to cope on their own, bereft of the superlative, cunning genius of their lost leader. And, in part, my hopes were fulfilled, for in the many seasons past the Barbarian conquerors have merely occupied the isle of Komar, too busily settling their internal dissensions to bother with any schemes for extending their savage empire in the direction of my realm of Tharkoon. Now, however, it would seem the situation has been resolved. Such plans are indeed afoot—if you accurately report the purpose of the Xothun’s mission here, as I believe you do.”