Niamh shrank from the touch of the black warriors, but they offered her no insult, merely binding her wrists in a similar manner to Janchan’s, their manner cool, aloof, and impersonal. She could hardly take her eyes off them, and regarded them with amazement and fascination as they went about the business of disarming and binding the four travelers with smooth efficiency and dispatch. It was their incredible physical perfection and the almost superhuman purity and beauty of their features which roused her awe. For their clothing, which consisted quite simply of low sandals and a long narrow length of some sparkling fabric like silver lame—wound about the hips, one end tucked neatly into the waistband with an effect like a cummerbund, the other end draped across the chest and tossed carelessly over the left shoulder—left the rest of their bodies quite bare. And the superhuman degree of physical development, to the point of amazing masculine beauty, left her quite speechless.
If Janchan and Niamh were struck dumb with astonishment, the Goddess Arjala was exhilarated and virtually transformed with exultant joy. Her voluptuous womanly beauty, already remarkably handsome, was flushed and radiant. Her opulent breasts heaved as she panted in transports of bliss. Her glorious dark eyes flashed like perfect gems as she watched the descent and approach of those she unhesitatingly deemed her Divine cousins, the Lords of The World Above. A slight frown creased her brow as she discerned the surprising ebon hue of their skins; for just a moment, the shadow of a doubt dimmed the intensity of her joy.
But then her brow cleared and she shrugged off her momentary twinge of disillusionment. For, in beauty of feature and magnificence of bodily development, they were unquestionably godlike.
It was just that they were… different than she had expected, that’s all.
And in the next moment her doubts returned, and this time they were redoubled.
For her cousins from The World Above made absolutely no reply to her filial greetings. In fact, her welcoming words roused within them not the slightest response of any kind. They did not even pay her any particular attention, merely removed the various objects she wore at her gem-studded girdle, tied her hands behind her, and turned indifferently to give their attentions to Zarqa the Kalood.
It was strange—remarkably strange!
Their eyes, weird orbs of sparkling quicksilver, slid over her indifferently. They dealt with her precisely as they had dealt with her companions, their manner distant, aloof, cool, their minds elsewhere. Her joyous words, her proud claims of kinship, they ignored completely. It was almost as if they did not hear her, or did not comprehend her meaning. Perhaps they were ignorant of the Laonese speech; perhaps they were—deaf?
But that was nonsense, bordering almost on blasphemy. For the gods of the Laonese pantheon are omniscient. They know all, and speak every tongue, and can even read the unspoken thoughts buried in the human heart. And it was inconceivable that they should be deaf, for that condition implies the results of disease or injury or genetic flaw. The gods can suffer no impairment of their faculties, no infirmity of the flesh …
Arjala stared after them with bafflement, almost with fear. It was impossible, it was inconceivable, that they should treat her so. Why… they handled her with such casual indifference, it was almost as if in their eyes she was but an animal, and her speech the inarticulate noise of a brute thing, the braying of a mere—creature.
The four adventurers saw little of the mysterious city in the sky. The beautiful black supermen with the cold, indifferent features and the inscrutable eyes of sparkling quicksilver bundled them onto the giant blue birds, leaving the sky-sled where it lay. Wings of iridescent indigo spread wide, caught the wind, and they rose from the branch and soared in a steep, swooping circle up into the heavens where the Green Star blazed.
The scarlet city expanded before them, curiously designed towers glinting in the sun. The great zawkaw swept up over the curving rim of the enormous metal disk, and arrowed down into the fantastic sky metropolis like homing pigeons flying to their nest.
The travelers caught a swift, transient glimpse of enormous, complicated, multileveled structures—broad avenues fanning cut from a central citadel crowned with soaring spires—then, one by one, the hawks swooped into a circular black opening which yawned in the metal flanks of an immense, bulbous dome.
They found themselves within a tremendous enclosed space with a domelike roof which arched high above their heads. Spikes of the omnipresent red metal thrust out from the curving inner walls of the dome, which walls, they saw, were studded with circular ports, some open, some lidded shut. Roosting on these metal spars were scores of the great blue hawks, some sleeping with their beaked heads tucked beneath a wing, some feeding from troughs filled with raw meat, red and dripping.
The interior of the dome was brightly lit in some manner they could not identify. The noonlike brilliance came from no visible lamps, and the source of the harsh glare remained unknown.
Scarcely had the travelers taken all this in with dazed, uncomprehending eyes before their unspeaking captors whisked them out of the saddle, thrust them into a circular tunnel of glistening metal, and conducted them in small, bullet-shaped cars that moved silently and swiftly on monorail tracks down into the deeper levels of the citadel.
They were swiftly conducted through a series of chambers and antechambers, wherein cold-faced black men worked at incomprehensible mechanisms of sparkling crystal and glinting metal, busying themselves over tasks of an unfathomable nature. Then they were suddenly thrust into a large domed hall through a circular door which slid smoothly and ponderously shut behind them.
They looked about them bewilderedly. The room was immense, lit by the same sourceless illumination they had observed in the great dome of the zawkaw, and the floor was littered with rude pallets whereon dozens of men and women of their own race lay curled in sleep, or squatted, staring at nothing with blank, hopeless expressions.
One of these, an old man, his hair transmuted by age to dull silver, came up to them. His features were wrinkled with age, his form lean, his face weary and scored by suffering. But an unquenchable vitality glowed within him, shining through his eyes, which were bright, alert, inquisitive, and not unfriendly.
“New additions to our company, I see.” He smiled. “Well, be welcome, strangers, to the Flying City of Calidar.”
“Calidar?” Janchan repeated in bewilderment. “But that is the miraculous cloud-kingdom of the Demigods and Avatars in our myths—surely this cannot be—?”
“Of course it is, you mocking mortal!” Arjala sniffed with a gloating smite. “What else could this amazing realm be but the sacred celestial City of the Thousand Gods?”
The old man smiled faintly.
“You have fallen prey to a regrettable delusion, madam,” he said gently. “You will find no gods in residence here—naught but a race of murderous maniacs, who regard us as no more than mindless beasts. But, come, let us introduce ourselves—there will be time aplenty for idle conversation later. I am known as Nimbalim of Yoth, your friend, I hope, and, alas, your fellow captive. Permit me to commiserate with you on thus becoming involuntary members of the Legion of the Doomed…”
In the silence that followed, his last words echoed through the domed immensity of the chamber;
The Doomed… Doomed… Doomed…
Chapter 8
The Legion of the Doomed
Niamh stifled a gasp as the old man gave them his name, and turned her great eyes upon him with astonishment and wonder.