The Goddess Arjala stifled a shrill cry of mingled horror and awe and clasped her hands to her brow at the uncanny sensation. For the Winged Men do not speak as we do, which is to say “mouth to ear,” but communicate directly mind to mind. They possess no organs of audible speech, although their sense of bearing is as acute as that of humans.
If the Goddess reacted with chill horror to the sensation of telepathy, the younger girl found it more curious and interesting than frightful.
“Oh, it is like a small still, quiet voice speaking within my own head,” she exclaimed. “Ask the creature to do it again, please, Prince!”
The Kalood smiled at the child over his gaunt, bony shoulder.
Do not be afraid of me, ladies, he advised gently. I am a rational being and your friend, and nothing you need fear.
The Princess of Phaolon examined him with interested eyes. The Kalood was naked and sexless, his lean, attenuated, and not unhandsome body covered with a cool, dry, tough golden hide. There was truly nothing monstrous or abnormal about his appearance, although it was strange to her eyes. It was the high, arched, batlike wings—now neatly folded upon his shoulders—which made him seem so different from the common run of humankind, but even these were not horrible or beastlike once you got accustomed to them. Indeed, they looked somehow natural and fitting on his tall form, with the high, bony shoulders and long sinewy arms.
But his features were in no wise particularly different from the faces of men. True, he had a swelling dome of a brow, and a long, lantern-jawed, lugubrious face, with huge, sad eyes of luminous and mystic purple, devoid of the whites. He seemed to be entirely hairless, his domed brow bald but crowned with a stiff crest of darkly-golden feathers that began between his eyes and extended in a narrow strip over the top of his skull, from brow to nape—for all the world like the clipped horsehair crest on an ancient Greek helmet.
His mouth was small, thin-lipped, but perfectly formed. The oddest thing about his features was not at once noticeable. And that was that he lacked the organs of hearing, and where the ears protrude from the sides of a man’s head stretched only smooth, unbroken flesh.
But his features, albeit strange, were not unhandsome, certainly not repellent; neither were they devoid of expression. There was gentle intelligence and wisdom and a surprisingly human flicker of humor about his mobile features. And when he smiled at the girl, his features lit up with inner warmth and friendliness.
“Why, I’m not afraid of you at all—‘Zarqa,’ is that your name?” she cried. He nodded, and she said; “It must be extremely sad to be the last of your kind; sad, and lonely, too, I am sure. Thank you for your share in rescuing me …”
Zarqa nodded gratefully. It is indeed sad and lonely to be an immortal, my child. But since the boy, Karn, a youth no longer with us and whom I judge to be only a year or two older than yourself, rescued me from the magician’s tower in the Dead City of Sotaspra, it has been less lonely. For now I have found good friends among your race (among which I hope to soon be able to count your charming self), and so numerous and exciting have been the adventures through which we have recently passed that, why, I have had no time in which to feel lonely.
Janchan and the princess laughed at this slight attempt of humor on the part of Zarqa, but as for the Goddess, she shuddered at the unspeakably weird sensation of telepathic communication, and viewed the vaunt, golden man with superstitious horror and loathing. Indeed, when Zarqa turned back to his work at the controls and set his full attention to the problem of ascending to the high terraces, Arjala leaned over and touched Niamh’s shoulder.
“Be careful, girl, with that winged monster!” she hissed in the princess’ ear. “The amphashands occupy an equivocal role in our legends; they have been known to tear heroes asunder, and in certain of the Sacred Books they are depicted as having an obsession with human females. Beware lest the creature delude you with a pretense of friendliness, and lure you aside, only to subject you to his masculine lusts!”
Niamh would have laughed, but she repressed it. Instead she turned a wide-eyed stare on the older woman, whom she found a delight in teasing.
“Do you mean—rape?” the girl asked, with a straight face.
“That… or even worse!” the Goddess affirmed.
Pausing for just a moment to wonder what could possibly be worse, Niamh leaned over and whispered; “I will certainly beware of the eventuality, Goddess… but, in case you haven’t yet noticed, Zarqa lacks certain other organs besides those of speech and hearing.”
Arjala flushed, started to speak, then turned a fierce, suspicious eye on the girl. Completely lacking a sense of humor herself, the Goddess continually suspected that others were making fun of her, but could seldom be quite sure.
However, the young girl’s face was demure and smiling, and if there was just the slightest glint of mischief in her eye, Arjala could not perceive it. So, with a stiff and haughty nod, she retired to silence again, while Niamh continued chatting in a lively and animated fashion with her two rescuers.
Arjala hoped her guardsmen would soon arrive and overtake the sky-sled, and set her free from the company of these curiously relaxed and friendly persons, whose casual impertinence was beginning to exasperate her. Arjala never felt fully comfortable, save when among people who regarded her with a fitting degree of superstitious awe, and who had been imbued from the cradle with a consciousness of their own lowly and inferior station.
Chapter 6
The Descent of the Gods
They spent the few hours of darkness that remained in that long and busy night camped upon a small branchlet atop the nearest tree. By ascending into the high terraces, Zarqa correctly assumed that he had managed to elude the Ardhanese warriors pursuing them. Hungry, exhausted, drained from the tension and excitement of their escape, the four adventurers slept deeply.
All save for Zarqa the Kalood. In the immeasurable centuries of his existence, the Winged Man had to a great extent fallen out of the habit of slumbering during the nocturnal period. Sleep, for his kind, anyway, was little more than a habit, for the heady and honeyed syrup on which he infrequently fed was sustenance enough for his extraordinary vitality, and the immense vigor and stamina of his alien body was such that it seldom actually required sleep.
So Zarqa kept guard over his companions while they slumbered. Sitting on the edge of the branchlet, his long arms hugging his knees, the gaunt, naked, golden Kalood stared thoughtfully into the depths of the dark night where no moon rose and no stars shone. What were the thoughts that filled his calm and vast and ageless mind during those long hours I cannot say—I will not even guess—but it is likely that more than once his memory conjured up the likeness of the boy Karn, his first friend among human kind, and the first mortal who had won his affection in a million years or more.
They were very unalike, those two. The boy, sixteen or seventeen at most, an untutored savage, a young orphan huntsman of the wild, with his gawky adolescent body, all long legs and strong shoulders, his wild tangled shock of raw gold hair, snub-nosed face with wide, amber eyes bright and clear and alert, bore no slightest resemblance or affinity to the gaunt, lean, seven-foot, winged Kalood who had outlived the last of his weird race ten thousand centuries ago.
But, somehow, from opposite ends of the world (from opposite corners of the very universe itself, although Zarqa knew it not) these two had come together and had found a common ground on which to build a friendship. A friendship which still endured, although the Kalood little guessed that I, Karn of the Red Dragon people, yet lived.