And what was meant by his appellation “Delgan of the Isles”? What isles? I knew of no islands, nor even of any sea, in all the World of the Green Star, which, for all I had thus far learned in my perils and peregrinations, consisted of a forest of titanic trees which stretched unbroken from pole to pole.
I resolved to inquire of these matters, when I had the next opportunity to converse privately with Delgan. But it did not seem to be a matter of any particular importance, and certainly not one of any pressing urgency.
What was important was that loyal, homely little Klygon and myself were helpless captives in the clutches of a tribe of savages given to unspeakable cruelties, and even to cannibalism.
We were disarmed and helpless; we were also completely lost here in the black Abyss at the bottom of the world, without the slightest chance of escaping to the upper world again.
In such a situation, it would be understandable if black despair did not settle upon us to dampen our spirits.
However, we had one hopeful aspect in our current situation. And that was that, in the mysterious blue-skinned man of unknown race, we had, it seemed a friend and a potential ally.
Yes, it seemed we had a valuable friend in Delgan of the Isles… but, as to his usefulness, only time would tell.
Chapter 12
Condemned to Death
Before long I became adjusted to the rhythm of life here among the savages of the forest floor.
They were a brutish lot, the cave-men. It was Delgan’s opinion that they were the inbred and degenerate descendants of members of the higher Laonese civilizations, who had fled here for refuge from war, invasion, or plague, or who had fallen into the Abyss as had Klygon and I. Over hundreds of generations, it might be, they had been forced, by the crude realities of this harsh life, to abandon the arts of civilization one by one, in order to survive. By now they were little more than beasts, themselves.
Gor-ya, whom I soon met, was an immense, hulking brute with little piggish red eyes and the heavy hand of a bully. He was a virtual giant of a man, for all his bestial anthropoid form. He ruled the cavern-dwellers by simple virtue of superior strength and the possession of cruelties even more fiendish than that of the other males of his tribe.
There were perhaps half a hundred albino savages of Gor-ya’s tribe. They dwelt here in caverns hollowed out beneath the roots of the giant trees for the great relative safety such a haven afforded them against the dire and dreadful predators which roamed and ruled the eternal darkness of the forest’s floor.
Their mode of existence was harsh and uncompromising, and the savages clung to life with a tenacity and an ingenuity which would have been admirable had they not been so despicable and brutish a lot.
The central cavern of the fire-pit was but the largest of the subterranean places hollowed by patient generations beneath the floor of the forest. In one such cavern, only slightly smaller than the one in which I had first awakened, the cavefolk kept their “herds.” These partially domesticated “cattle” were fat white grubs the size of full-grown bulls. I have since thought the yngoum, as the cavefolk called them, resembled the aphids kept by the ants and certain other insects of my home world, but this is merely my opinion.
If there were other tribes of albino savages who dwelt here at the bottom of the world, I never learned. The cavern-dwellers, however, had their enemies here in the subterranean darkness, as I soon discovered. Exactly what these enemies were, I did not at first know. Gor-ya and his chieftains called them the kraan. This is a word which simply means “crawlers,” and was employed by the cavefolk as a term of disrespect and loathing. I did not at first understand the term, but it became increasingly obvious that the tribe shared this cavern-world with unseen foes they hated and feared, for Gor-ya maintained a system of guards night and day over the entrances and exits to those portions of the tunnel-system, and the punishments he visited upon any guard who was discovered derelict in his duties was fearful.
Klygon and I were soon put to work tending the immense, fat, mindless aphids. This was an easy job, as the yngoum were too stupid to do anything else but feed, which they did at all times they were not asleep. The waddling herd of obese, repulsive “cattle” browsed on the crops of mould or fungi or moss which sprouted in the dark, moist environment of the large, lightless cavern. Our duties consisted simply of keeping an eye on them, to see that they should not stray into any of the side tunnels or passageways which led into the unused portions of the cave-system, where they might be seized by the kraan.
Who or what these tireless, unseen enemies of the cave-people were I still had no idea. Whenever Delgan and Klygon and I had a chance to speak together, our conversation was on other matters than the nature of the mysterious and dreaded kraan. For the ugly little Assassin and I, of course, were preoccupied by our desires to escape from this captivity.
“There is no particular problem to making an escape,” Delgan said in reply to our questions. “The entrances to those parts of the tunnel-system unoccupied by Gor-ya’s people lie open and unguarded beyond the cavern where the yngoum feed. You have merely to avoid for a few moments the eyes of the guards set over the yngoum-herders, and slip away into the lightless tunnels beyond. Nothing could be easier…”
Klygon eyed the ascetic elderly man with suspicious eyes.
“Now, lad,” he said querulously to me, ignoring the aloof smile on Delgan’s face, “you can be certain sure ‘tis far more difficult than that. Elsewise your high-and-mighty friend, here, would of done the same himself, many a long and weary year ago!”
Perhaps I should add here that Klygon, for some peculiar reason, had taken an instant dislike to the quiet, aristocratic person of Delgan of the Isles. From the very first he viewed our only friend in the cavern-world with a suspicion and a distrust he did not even bother to hide. I am unable to account for his distaste of the elegant, gentle-spoken, clever older man. Perhaps it was simply a matter of the enormous difference between them, for Delgan, with his weary, lean, aristocratic face, quick bright eyes and sparse ink-black hair framing a high, noble brow, his fastidious manner and clever speech, differed enormously in every way from homely, blunt-spoken Klygon , with his knobby, ugly face, stunted body, and speech which savored of the gutters and back alleys of the thieves’ quarter of Ardha. Two more completely different individuals it would be hard to find across the breadth of the planet.
“As the wise and clever Klygon so correctly suspicions,” Delgan said, “it is indeed more difficult than that. Simply to elude the attentions of the guards is a matter of no particular difficulty, for they are ignorant, lazy brutes. The problem lies in the unexplored tunnels themselves, for which no maps exist. Therein one would quickly become hopelessly lost, to wander for all eternity without finding an egress to the upper world, were it not for the fact that you would die of hunger or thirst or from the attack of predators long before that.”
“Aye, I thought there’d be a catch to it!” sniffed Klygon.
“How can you be so sure no exit to the upper world exists beyond the cavern where the yngoum feed?” I asked.
He shrugged casually. “I don’t know it,” he said indifferently, “I just say that no one knows of one. No, my friends, the only exit to the upper world of which we know for certain is that by which you were carried captive here.” And he nodded toward a large opening in the wall of the cavern across from the fire-pit.