Mad Empress of Callisto
Lin Carter
Book One
ZAMARA OF THARKOL
Chapter 1
On the Great Plains
Man’s inability to foresee future events is one of Nature’s kindest gifts.
Had I but known what would come about from that day’s idle hunting expedition; no power in the world could have forced me to stir from the city of my beloved mate.
But a month of festivities and celebrations had begun to pall on one who was more accustomed to peril and adventure than to interminable laudatory speechmaking and the laying of cornerstones. And besides, the vanth were migrating.
Once each year this species of game traverses the Great Plains of Haratha to their mating grounds in the valleys of the Black Mountains. You might describe the vanth as stag or elk, for they are the closest you can come in terrene equivalents. A large quadruped, hunted for its succulent meat, which is greatly favored by the Shondakorians; a beast, however, not befurred but covered with a slick, supple hide like that of the seal or the dolphin; but a beast whose brow bears up a branching staglike crown of antlers nonetheless.
At any other season of the Thanatorian year, the vanth are elusive and fleet-footed game, difficult to catch and hopeless quarry to chase if you happen to be mounted on the restive and unruly thaptors the inhabitants of the jungle Moon employ in lieu of horses. The thaptor is a large, feathered but wingless avian vaguely like a cross between the ostrich and the legendary gryphon, and, like the ostrich, capable of attaining remarkable speed. But its gallop, if I may employ the word, consists of spurts of brief duration, while the mighty vanth can run all day without tiring.
During the short migratory season, however, the vanth traverse the Great Plains in gigantic herds, their single purpose consisting of the mating urge. The presence of mounted huntsmen, which at any other season would disperse them in rapid flight in all directions, they ignore at this season, intent only on reaching their mating grounds in the distant mountains.
Thus, with dawn, a gaily caparisoned hunting party rode forth from the great gates of the Golden City of Shondakor to hunt the vanth. And thus a sequence of events was set into motion which was to forever alter the destiny of a mighty empire and to reshape the future history of many nations.
I, Jandar of Callisto, soldier of fortune from the distant planet Earth, and my beloved Princess, Darloona of Shondakor, rode in the forefront of this expedition. Scarce a month before―as we Earthlings measure the passage of time―had we been wed, upon the success of my mission to rescue the Princess of the Ku Thad from her captivity and to destroy for all time that race of cruel and despotic warriors, the Sky Pirates of Zanadar. After innumerable adventures on the mysterious planet of Thanator, or Callisto, fifth moon of distant Jupiter, I had won a double victory: the conquest of Zanadar, the City in the Clouds; and the conquest of the heart of the most beautiful and desirable woman of two worlds.
Despite the alienage of my birth and despite my lack of noble or aristocratic lineage, I wed the woman I loved with the wholehearted consent of her people and of the peers of her realm. And today I reigned beside her as Prince of the Golden City. Such are the traditions of the Ku Thad race: the custom of a prince-consort is unknown to them.
We were very happy, she and I.
On that fateful morning, as we rode from Shondakor to hunt the mighty vanth across the Great Plains, we were accompanied by a party of our dearest friends and most loyal courtiers. Among these was the handsome and dashing Prince Valkar, with whom I had formed a firm friendship while we had both served incognito among that bandit-horde called the Chac Yuul, now long since dispersed and broken. With us as well rode gallant and chivalrous Lukor of Ganatol, that master swordsman who had taught me the ancient and noble science of the blade.
As well, there rode in our company the tall, gaunt, and solemn-eyed Koja of the Yathoon Horde, an alien insectoid creature, who had been my first friend on all of Thanator and into whose cold and passionless heart I had instilled the precepts of friendship. The ugly and doggedly devoted Ergon, a former slave of the Perushtarians, and the somber but valiant and heroic Zantor, who had been a great captain among the Corsairs of the Clouds, rode with us as well. And in our train thundered a half-company of the guardsmen of Shondakor, armed against any unlikely danger.
Oh, we were a gay and laughing band, as we rode forth from the Golden City that bright and brilliant morn!
How soon … how very soon … our gaiety was to darken with black tragedy and our laughter turn to grim sorrow … and again I say, we mortals are fortunate that the future remains clouded and unknown, so that we may enjoy each moment to the full, happily ignorant of what is soon to come.
It was Darloona who first sighted the white vanth. Her glorious eyes flashed with excitement, her lithe body stretched in the saddle as she spurred her capricious thaptor into full gallop. Off she sped, the long grasses sighing in her wake, one slim arm holding poised and ready the slender javelin.
Only a half-instant later I flew after her, jolting my steed into the charge, following the floating banner of her gorgeous scarlet mane. Ere long I had caught up to her and we rode together, side by side, in pursuit of the vanth.
A white vanth is exceedingly rare and the huntsmen of Callisto consider such a beast a great prize. And our vanth was indeed white as the new-fallen snow―a superb brute, fully grown, bearing up its proud crown of antlers like the unchallenged monarch of the wilderness he was.
On ahead of us he fled in great gliding bounds, flying like the wind. We urged our thaptors to an even swifter stride, lest the beast escape us by reason of its untiring and superior speed. In no time we had left the rest of our party far behind, with the sole exception of the determined Ergon. His squat, muscular figure bent over the saddlebow, his scarlet face dark with exertion, bald pate gleaming with perspiration, the Perushtarian flung himself after us before any of the others could follow.
I turned laughing back at him, aflame with the speed of the chase and the excitement of it all, and he twisted his ugly, square-jawed face from its customarily sour expression into a gleeful, froglike grin. Immensely strong he was broad-shouldered, deep-chested Ergon, for all his diminutive height and bowed legs. We had been slaves together in the Perushtarian city of Narouk, and had fought side-by-side among the gladiators of Zanadar, and the ugly, loyal little man was the most faithful of friends.
On and on ahead of us the white vanth bounded, gliding with an almost magical swiftness through the long, sere grasses of the Great Plains of Haratha. Ere long my thaptor faltered, gasping for breath through its gaping parrot beak, savage orange eyes rolling wildly. I strove to urge it on, employing the small wooden club called an olo which is hung at the saddlebow for precisely that purpose; but it was no good, for my steed was winded and its charge slowed, as did the four-legged bird-horses ridden by Ergon and my beloved. We would lose the vanth, we knew, and must return to accept the laughing mockery of our fellow hunters with chagrin.
But―no!―for even as our mounts slowed, the vanth itself faltered in its flight, and, although it maintained a considerable lead on us, the beast no longer flew before us with the wings of the wind. Perchance it had strained a tendon in its headlong and precipitous flight, for I could see that it limped, gingerly putting its weight on one foreleg.
At any rate, from whatever cause, we still had a chance of coming within javelin-reach of the white vanth; so, instead of turning about to rejoin our comrades, now far behind us on the plain, we pressed on in hot pursuit of the limping vanth at diminished speed. And played into the hands of Destiny in so doing … .