I waited, motionless and unresisting, as the craft settled into the sand near me. Its shadow fell across me, cutting off the sun, I heard the squeal of sand as its weight crunched slowly into the wet beach. A door opened, men jumped out and came across the sand towards me.
“You would seem to be in distress, young man,” a man said to me in a voice I did not recognize—an old man, from the tone and timbre of his voice. “Can we do aught to alleviate your distress?”
I opened my mouth to ask my interlocutor if it had been his ship which had carried off a young girl from this very beach only hours before, when suddenly I heard a voice calling me by my name.
“Karn! Karn, me lad! Saints and Avatars—is it you?”
It was a voice I recognized; and my heart leaped up within me when I heard that hoarse, croaking sound.
“Klygon!” I gasped.
And then I choked, too full of emotion for words, and could say no more. But words were not needed; for in the next instant the little man was upon me, hugging the breath out of me and clapping my bare shoulder with his horny, calloused palm.
My rescuer, to whom I had been introduced as Parimus, Prince-Wizard of Tharkoon, was solicitous as to the condition of my blinded eyes. Not many minutes after his sky yacht had lifted up from the beach of the jungle isle whose name I now learned was Narjix, he was bathing my poor eyes with ungents and healing salves, tsk-tsking under his breath as he changed the dressings.
“Deplorable! Simply deplorable, my boy! But fortunately, the sea-water in which you were so long immersed has cleansed the burns and its natural astringent has precluded any infection from setting in. It is a great mercy that yon rogue, Klygon, applied wet black river-mud to your burns so soon after they were inflicted upon you; for ‘tis that good stroke of luck alone has saved your sight—”
“D’you mean I have a chance to see again?” I demanded.
From the way his hand on my brow moved, I know that he shrugged.
” ‘Tis very likely, but too soon to tell. Sea-water, however, makes an excellent antiseptic, in lieu of any other. These salves will help heal the raw places, while an application of these rays may do much to rebuild the nerve-cells.” He switched on a healing lamp whose rays were directed into my eyes. I could not see the glow of the lamp, but the skin of my face itched and tingled from the action of the rays.
“Ten minutes, now; not a moment more!” he cautioned.
“I will remember, Lord,” said the young bowman, whose name was Zorak. The science wizard shuffled back to the bridge of his vessel; Klygon came to my side.
“Lad, lad,” he breathed, ” ‘tis marvelous—good to see you again! Why, we all fancied you dead—drowned, food for the fishes, at very least—after that great wicked wave swept you off the Xothun’s deck! Fancy a boy, blind as you were, findin’ your way to shore and livin’ like a castaway the while! Wonders will never cease, they say…”
“You have not yet told me what has become of our Komarian friends,” I reminded him.
“Aye, Demigods and Sages, that I ha’nt! Well, lad, we took the ship an’ sailed her into Tharkoon harbor; his wizardship, here, gave us a right royal welcome. The lad, Prince Andar I mean, an’ he, palavered back and forth… and th’upshot of it all was that his wizardry will lend his power to aid in the retakin’ of Komar; so Andar, the dear lad, and that gruff of grouch, Eryon, sailed back t’ Komar, dressed up like pirates—”
“How’s that?”
“I mean t’ say, in the borrowed finery tooken from the corpses o’ the Barbarians. See, Andar figures to enter Komar harbor by dark o’ night, dressed up like the Barbarians, with blue goo smeared on they faces an’ everywhere. He hopes to take the Citadel by surprise, the guards not knowin’ they be no Barbarians at all, but the true an’ rightful lords of Komar…”
I let him chatter on in his stumbling, colorful, slangy way; all the while, the healing rays tingled upon my burned eyes.
A bit later, Zorak switched off the lamp, replaced the fresh dressings on my eyes, and forcibly ushered the voluble little bandy-legged Assassin from my cabin, sternly saying that his master decreed I was to rest for a time.
Outside the cabin, Klygon paused, chewed his lip.
“What is it?” asked Zorak.
“Oh, I don’t know; something I fergot t’ mention,” growled the little Ardhanese.
“Something important?” the bowman prodded.
Klygon shrugged.
“Probably not… ‘twere about the woman what landed on Xathun-deck, when we lay half-a-day out o’ Tharkoon. You know, the lady as sailed off with Andar bound for the island-city. Thought I should mention it to the lad in there; how odd it be that she comes out o’ the sky, clingin’ to that monstrous great blue bird an’ all…”
“Does Karn know the woman?”
He shrugged again. “Maybe so, maybe not. Anyway, th’ lad’d recognize her by name. Well, no matter; guess it be of no great import after all … I’ll mention it to him when he wakes, if I remember t’do it … let’s go get some grub! All this talkin’ has made poor of Klygon hungry as a bull ythid in matin’-season.”
Zorak laughed, and they went off together. I did not learn of this exchange until much later, nor did I learn the identity of the girl who had so surprisingly landed on the decks of the pirate galley, until after the end of this adventure.
For, of course, Klygon forgot to tell me about it—until it was too late.
I slept, woke, washed and ate, and donned the warrior’s harness of gilded leather Zorak had set out for me. I found my way to the bridge where Klygon and Parimus were.
The flight to Komar was taken by a wandering, circuitous route. This was partly to avoid detection by any of the Barbarian galleys which ranged the inner sea; and partly in order to time our arrival at the island city according to the schedule which Prince Andar and the science wizard had worked out between them.
Twice more Parimus treated my eyes with his healing salve and subjected them to the curious rays of his lamp. The rays would stimulate the regrowth of damaged tissues and vastly accelerate the repair of the nerves.
No more was I the dirty, half-naked wild boy, clad in a tattered loin-cloth. If Shann were to see me now, she probably would not recognize me. Cleaned up, my wild mane of raw blond hair was trimmed back in a warrior’s braid; newly garbed, cloaked and buskined, with a longsword in its scabbard at my side, I felt like a civilized being again. I had not felt so in a long time, and found it to be a good feeling.
I thought of Shann night and day; wondering where she was and what had become of her. Had it truly been some manner of aircraft which had carried her off from our jungle isle, or perhaps some monstrous bird of prey like that which had hunted Klygon and I down to the black abyss at the Bottom of the World, after our escape from the Yellow City?
I tried, to recall her exact words, spoken on the beach as I blundered towards her through the jungle, just before the unknown thing had carried her away from me. But I could not remember precisely what she had said.
Was it a bird—or an airship?
That whirring sound I had heard—was it in truth the sound of engines, or had it been perhaps the beating of mighty wings?
Strain my memory as I might, I could not remember. Not that it made any difference, I guessed.
The girl I loved had been carried off into the unknown. That was all I knew; and that was enough.
Night fell across the Green Star planet. Suddenly, there came a shrill cry of alarm from the bridge. I sprang from my pallet, wrapped a bit of cloth about my loins, and snatched up my naked sword. I made my blind and blundering way into the control cabin, where the lookout was posted.