I take no credit for my bravery in sleeping under these conditions. During my adventurings upon the World of the Green Star I have evolved a certain, simple philosophy. One of its tenets is that you never know when danger will be thrust upon you and your strength will be taxed to the utmost. Therefore, I have fallen into the habit of snatching a nap whenever possible, for you never know when you will be called upon to battle for your life, and a body that is fresh and rested fights better than one which is tense and exhausted.
My slumber, in this dire captivity, however, must have seemed an example of the most heroic fortitude conceivable. For when I roused, sensing the nearness of another, I read amazement and a reluctant admiration in the face of the person who had approached me.
“Stranger, do you fear death so little, you can sleep in the very lair of cannibals?”
The person who addressed this question to me in surprise and seeming admiration was not one of the hairy, uncouth cave-dwelling savages, but, in his slender, elegant mien, obviously a denizen of one of the treetop cities. He had a broad, intellectual brow, a delicate, fine-boned face, and quick, clever, inquisitive eyes. He was of uncertain age, but, then, as I have heretofore noted, I have always found it next to impossible to ascertain the age of the individual Laonese with any degree of precision.
I grinned at his admiration.
“While I live, I must sleep,” I said. “And I still live. It does not, therefore, require any particular bravery to attend to the needs of nature, even though a captive.”
He smiled and said nothing. It was a singularly beautiful smile, and it illuminated his wasted features. I could not help noticing that his face was lean and deeply lined, whether by the years or by suffering. He was nearly naked, his attire consisting of worn rags patched together, and his body was thin to gauntness, his lean back and shoulders scored by red welts as from a recent whipping. I began to develop considerable curiosity concerning the friendly stranger.
“There are yet other needs of the flesh,” he observed, setting bowls of rudely carved wood before me. “Food and drink, being among them.” The bowls contained fresh water and scraps of meat. As the odor of meat assailed my nostrils, my mouth watered uncontrollably, and I became aware of a powerful appetite.
“This is kindly of you,” I said, “but it is difficult to eat without the use of one’s hands.”
He shrugged tiredly. “Our lord and master, Gor-ya, chief of the cave-people, permits you to be fed but not to be freed. So let me assist you.”
I gratefully accepted the rude meal from his hands, while continuing to study him with curiosity. In delicacy and breeding and elegance of mien, he differed in no way from the pampered princelings of Phaolon or the other highly civilized races of the World of the Green Star. However, his origin was obviously different, for there were certain peculiarities about his person which intrigued me.
For one thing, there was the matter of his hair.
The Laonese who dwell in the jewelbox cities miles aloft in the forks and branches of the titanic trees possess hair as light and silken as thistledown, and generally of shades varying between sparkling pure silver and queer, delightful green-gold, which lends them an aspect uncommonly elfin in appearance. But the sparse growth of hirsute adornment which crowned his high, intelligent brow, although light and silken, was of jet-black, a shade I do not recall having seen before on this planet.
His eyes, too, were glittering beads of jet-quick, alert, shrewd, inquisitive. And his skin—!
The Laonese races I have met during my travels and adventures have skin colorings which range from the tones of old parchment and mellow ivory to sallow Oriental shades of amber. His complexion, however, was a distinct and vivid shade of blue—unless my eyes were mistaken, and his seemingly peculiar coloration was merely a trick of the light, which was brilliant, richly colored—and wavering?
I filed the fact away for later reference; it was not something to inquire about, I thought, for sheer politeness alone made me refrain from questioning him concerning his race.
When he had finished his task and I was fed, I thanked him.
“I am Karn of the Red Dragon,” I said, simply. “It is good to have found one friend, at least, among so many enemies. I assume that you are a captive here, like myself?”
He nodded, with another of those quick, beautiful smiles which lit up his drawn, weary features.
“My name is Delgan,” he said, “Delgan of the Isles, a captive for many years.”
“If the cavefolk are cannibals, as you suggest, I am surprised to learn you have remained in possession of your own skin.”
He laughed, a strange, musical, silvery laugh. “Gor-ya has found my wits of service to him,” he said. “The cave-dwellers have sunk so low in the scale of human society that their intelligence is all but submerged in brutish lusts. For this reason, a man with a quick, clever mind—such as myself—finds employment among them, other than as mere provender for the table.”
I nodded a bit squeamishly at the empty bowl from which I had just been fed.
“May I hope that was the flesh of beasts, not men?”
“It was. Rest easy on that, O Karn! The cave-men partake of the flesh of their enemies, conquered in battle, only after they have fed the God.”
I was about to inquire what he meant by that, but an angry bellow roared across the cavern and Delgan rose nimbly to his feet and hurried to the bidding of his master.
I gazed after the older man, speculatively.
If he had been a prisoner among these brutes for many years, my own chances for making an escape to freedom would seem few.
But at least it seemed I had a friend in Delgan of the Isles …
That night—if night indeed existed in a realm of perpetual gloom such as this—Klygon and I slept huddled in a side cavern with other captives of the cave-dwellers.
These were a sorry lot of pitifully starved and spiritless men and women. Most of them had fallen prey to the albino savages in much the same manner in which the homely little Assassin and I had been made prisoner. Either they were travelers, whose steeds had precipitated them into the Abyss for any one of a variety of reasons, or they were members of the many relatively primitive tribes of nomad hunters who roamed the worldwide forest of giant trees without allegiance to any particular city. The boy hunter, Karn, whose body I now wore, had been one of this hardy breed, I recalled. But from strong, independent nomad warriors, the captives had been starved, beaten, or brutalized into submission, and a more timid and degraded lot I had never encountered. Some of them had been born to parents enslaved by the albino savages, and thus knew no other existence than this miserable way of life. A few, like Delgan, had been captured within recent years.
Delgan himself held a position of some trust and responsibility among his savage masters, for his quick wits and clever tongue had won him their truculent admiration. Thus, he was not billeted with the other captives, but had quarters elsewhere in the greater caverns, where he served the chief of the cave-savages as an overseer of the slaves.
I speculated concerning the mystery of this Delgan of the Isles, as he termed himself. Never yet had I encountered or even heard of a blue-skinned race on the planet of the giant trees, although there were, or had been in former centuries, a nation of strange savage marauders called the “Blue Barbarians,” given to periodic attacks of racial madness, during which they ran amok and destroyed everything in their path. Delgan, however, was an urbane and civilized individual, and certainly no barbarian—and I was not certain that the Blue Barbarians were so-called because of their coloration, anyway.