A storm blew up suddenly—one of the many swift, disastrous squalls which rendered aerial flight over the inland sea so unexpectedly hazardous. Black clouds closed about them almost before they noticed it; within moments they were flying practically blind through gusts of gale-force wind. Sheets of rain sluiced them, stinging their eyes, rendering their vision even more limited than before. They would have descended to alight on some rocky isle to wait out the storm had they been able, but no isle beneath them appeared in the tossing waves.
At length a flare of lightning did indeed reveal an island to their left; they made for it with all possible speed. But in the blackness and confusion of wind and rain, they suddenly found themselves hurtling on a collision course with an alien skyship of strange design.
Janchan yelled with surprise, hurling himself to the controls. The sled angled off at a sickeningly vertiginous tilt, narrowly missing a collision with the unknown craft. Now they had lost track of where, in this wilderness of flickering lightning and boiling storm-clouds, the island lay. A moment later they found themselves closing with the strange skyship once again—only this time it was alarmed and ready for them.
Before any of them could think or act, the enemy ship loosed a bolt of sparkling fire which grazed the tail of their craft. Even so glancing a shot, however, was sufficient to send them reeling through space, turning over and over like a falling leaf.
Wind-torn black waves swung up in their faces. Then the world slid sideways and black jungles appeared before them, slashed with a narrow strip of beach, towards which they were hurtling at a frightful rate of speed, totally out of control.
Pull up! Janchan—pull up, or we will crash! came imperatively from the Winged Man.
“I’m trying to,” said the other through gritted teeth. “We seem to have suffered some damage from that energy blast… ah, there we go!”
The nose of the skysled rose, breaking its doomed dive. For a moment the craft hovered almost motionlessly, nose pointed at the storm. Then leaves and branches whipped at them, as the reeling craft plunged through the upper terraces of the jungle, it came to a jolting, shuddering halt, half-buried in the wet sand of the beach.
Had it not been for the padded body-sized grooves of the sled’s deck, in which they lay, plus the taut webbing of straps that bound them in place, the passengers of Zarqa’s craft might have been slain, seriously injured, or thrown clear. As things worked out, while they were all bruised, dazed and shaken up, none of them sustained anything more serious than a bump or a cut.
Janchan tore loose from his webbing and staggered over the tilted deck to where the frail old philosopher lay, pale and shaken, blood welling from a scratch on his brow.
“Are you all right, magister?” he demanded urgently.
“I believe these old bones have never before taken such a shaking-up,” wheezed Nimbalim gamely, but breathlessly. “However, I estimate that I am still in one piece. What of our Kaloodha friend, is he—”
I am unharmed, came a pulse of calm thought from Zarqa.
“We seem to be on fire,” the philosopher pointed out, nodding toward the tail of the craft from which black smoke eddied.
A scorch, nothing more.
“Yes, I think that’s all,” Janchan nodded. The bolt from the attacker had scorched the transparent protective enamel, the skysled’s heavy coating. Already, the downpour had extinguished the slight blaze. Now, the rain itself was lessening as the storm-clouds passed quickly by overhead, driven by gale-force winds.
Out of the clearing skies, the strange craft came floating down towards them!
Janchan swore and put his hand to his sword. But the deck of the immense craft was lined with archers who handled their bows in a very businesslike manner. He grasped the hilt of his blade, then relaxed his fingers hopelessly. They were too few, and too lightly armed, to put up much resistance against so overwhelming a force.
The larger ship settled on the beach some fifty yards from where they stood. A port yawned open, in the glistening metal flanks of the attacker. Small figures appeared, and came down a ramp to the wet sand. In the forefront was an elderly man of scholarly mien and princely dress, accompanied by a tall, bronzed, stalwart archer; a young boy with a bandaged face, and a small bow-legged little rogue, impishly ugly.
None of the strangers did Janchan or Zarqa recognize, except for one. The sight of that one brought them to their feet in stark astonishment.
“Karn!” Janchan roared, grasping the arm of the Kalood who stood beside him. The changeless melancholy in the solemn face of the Winged Man altered, for once, into an expression of surprise and delight.
For it was indeed I; and the ship wherefrom I had emerged was, of course, the aerial yacht of Prince Parimus!
And so we met again, there on the beach of an unknown isle after so long a time sundered apart! Janchan clasped me to his bosom, stammering with joyous astonishment, and Zarqa the Kalood, whom I had rarely known to smile before, smiled until I thought his golden face would crack.
Karn, my young friend, my rescuer from the prison of Sarchimus! Well-met, indeed, dear youth! Now do I think that the gods of The World Above are more than idle myths; for they have brought us back together again after such a long, weary separation!
“Then these are friends of yours, my boy?” murmured Parimus in horror. “And to think that I directed my warriors to fire upon their craft—to bring it down! I could not know, nor could you, with your blinded eyes, have told me the craft was that of allies! Strangers, can you ever forgive me—?”
Introductions were exchanged all around. We had, each of us, a thousand urgent questions to ask of the other; but the one question that was foremost in my dazed, uncomprehending mind was that of the whereabouts of Niamh the Fair.
Did she live or die, the girl I once had loved—the girl whose love I had betrayed with another?
Chapter 20.
SLITHERING HORROR
My lips parted. I was about to ask the fate of Niamh the Fair and of the Goddess Arjala, both of whom I had seen being carried away to safety out of the burning temple by Janchan and Zarqa the Kalood.
Parimus, however, interrupted.
“Time is of the essence, my friends,” the science wizard said. “Even as we speak, Prince Andar and his Komarian nobles are arriving at the harbor of his vanquished city in disguise, hoping to take the Blue Barbarians unawares and storm the royal citadel. Our own arrival is now slightly overdue; and unless we get underway immediately, we shall be too late to afford Andar the Komarian the all-important diversion we have planned between us.”
This was news to me, of course; and neither Zarqa nor Janchan were as yet acquainted with the gallant young Prince Andar whose kingdom had been overrun by the savage Barbarians, under their enigmatic and mysterious Warlord. In a few terse, well-chosen words, the Prince-Wizard of Tharkoon outlined the recent developments which had occurred since I had been washed over the side of the Xothun and lost in the measureless waters of the Komarian Sea, thus separated by the swift-flowing sequence of events from my allies and comrades.
“I am sure we all have many things to tell each other,” Prince Parimus smiled regretfully. “But the story of our various adventures shall have to await a safer, less urgent time for the telling. We must take to the air without delay; the isle of Komar lies not far from this uninhabited isle. But in these uncertain latitudes sudden storms arise in a twinkling, and the sooner we are aloft the quicker we shall arrive to assist Andar in his battle. Tell me, Kalood, does your craft still retain the power of flight or have we injured the mechanism by our unfortunate bolt of electric fire?”