And for a second time I swooned.
An immeasurable time later I woke to find cold water splashing in my face. Groggily rearing up on one elbow I found the boy Tomar bending over me, his worried face a pallid oval in the darkness. He was bathing my face with a bit of rag.
“Are you all right, sir?” he asked anxiously.
I nodded, forcing a grin.
“I seem to be still in one piece,” I made reply. “How about yourself?” The boy indicated that he had not been harmed.
“They thrust us in here with food and water,” he said. Glancing around, I found that we were imprisoned in a cage of iron bars; walls, floor and ceiling were composed of barred grills, until our place of captivity bore a certain resemblance to a monstrously huge birdcage―a resemblance I might have found amusing had it not been for the desperateness of our situation.
The cage was suspended by a chain of iron links from the rocky ceiling of the cavern which arched far above us, lost in the gloom.
Peering through the bars to ascertain as much as I could learn about our surroundings, I saw several similar cages also suspended by immense chains from the roof of the cavern. The light was too faint and dim for me to tell whether or not they were occupied.
We could see little of the remainder of the cavern, but it was obviously enormous and its floor must have stretched very far beneath us. The only illumination came from patches of phosphorescent mold or fungus which grew on some of the nearer stalactites. These glassy stone spears dangled from the black roof above and glistened wetly in the ghostly greenish glow.
The dish of food our captors had left us with looked distinctly unappetizing. Chunks of raw, bloody meat, some green with decay and crawling with maggots, reposed in a slimy stew. I silently determined that I would have to be a lot hungrier than I was, to attempt to down such unappetizing gobbets.
The food dish, by the way, was a shallow stone crock. The dish of water was also of smooth and hollow stone, evidently of artificial workmanship. The water, at least, was clear and fresh and cold. Doubtless it came from some subterranean pool or spring.
Tomar and I crouched on the floor of the cage, discussing our predicament in low tones. The iron bars were flat rather than rounded, and thus somewhat more comfortable to sit upon than might otherwise have been the case. But not much.
Our situation was dismal, if not quite hopeless. There was little hope that we could pry asunder the heavy iron bars, although these were very old and were scaly and red with centuries of rust. The lock that fastened shut the cage door was massive and antique and also thick with corrosion. But even if we were able to pry or break our way loose, we would still be suspended at an unknown height above the cavern floor, with no visible way to climb down.
Concerning this problem, our situation was mystifying. We might be suspended only ten feet above the stone floor―or four hundred! In the dim glow of decay, it was impossible to see anything beneath us. And from the way that echoes boomed and gobbled from wall to wall about the cavern, there was no way of telling our height. I plucked from the bowl a lump of greasy meat and let it fall between the bars of the bottom of the cage; although I listened carefully for any sound it might make when it hit the unseen floor, no such sound reached my ears.
There was nothing else to do; so, after a time, we slept.
It was the clash of horny claws against the cage-bars that aroused us; that and the buffet of heavy bodies that made the cage swing like a pendulum.
Tomar and I woke to stare into the fierce glare of mad orange eyes in a hideously beaked and feather-crested face. Two of the birdlike monstrosities clung to the outside of the cage and one of them was fumbling with the old lock and with a huge key which hung on a thong about his scrawny yellow neck.
Wrenching the door open, they reached in and dragged us out. Kicking free of the swaying cage, the two bird-warriors fell with us in a tight grip. My heart was in my mouth, I must confess; a moment later, however, vivid blue wings were spread open to break our fall and Tomar and I plummeted into the middle of an astonishing scene.
We were set down atop a level stone platform. To every side steep walls of stone fell away―it was like being marooned atop a tall pillar.
Eight or a dozen similar stone pillars―some higher than ours, some lower―thrust up about our own level. Atop these there squatted a number of the bird-warriors. In some cases three or even four of the monstrosities clung to the top of a single monolith, in other cases, only one.
We could see quite well here, for crude torches, smeared with oily pitch, blazed here and there. These were thrust into crevices in the rocks, and shed a fierce, wavering orange glow upon the barbaric scene.
“That must be their chief,” Tomar muttered.
Directly before us, squatting atop a broad pillar, a particularly huge and gross and repulsive bird-man was seated. It was impossible to determine his age, but he was obese and swollen, his sagging belly and dangling jowls forming a striking contrast with the general run of his kind, which were gaunt and lean.
He seemed to be diseased, for his jowls―or wattles―were rough and red and seemed painfully bloated, and the feathery crest which adorned his flat, blunt skull was moulting, many of the feathers missing entirely, some dangling loosely.
His great hooked parrot-beak was cracked and ragged-edged, and his glaring eyes were buried in unhealthy reddened pouches. His immense wings, of a virulent and poisonous green, were folded and towered high above his hunched shoulders, lending him the ferocious aspect of a squatting demon, crouched for judgment of the damned in some dark and cavernous hell.
The rounded pillar on which he nested was streaked and splotched with oily droppings and littered with bits of broken bone. In one scaly claw he clenched a huge piece of raw, bloody meat from which he ripped and tore juicy gobbets. With his hideous, diseased wattles and repulsive beaked head he reminded me for all the world of some repulsive and gigantic vulture gobbling away at carrion.
The other bird-men clustered about on nearby pillars squawked and cawed and fluttered. From time to time the chief uttered a cackling, hoarse cry. Listening keenly to this exchange, I got the uncanny feeling that the monster-men were talking amongst themselves. At least, they seemed to have the rudiments of articulate speech, although so hoarse and metallic were their cawing voices that it was all but impossible to be certain. Nevertheless, listening closely to what transpired, I formed the impression that one of the bird-men, whom I thought I recognized from his harness and accouterments as having been among those who had captured us, and who may perhaps have been the leader of the war-party, addressed his gross chieftain by the name of Skeer, and was addressed in turn as Zawk. Another monster-man, aged and balding and rheumy-eyed, who seemed to hold some privileged position as counselor or shaman, and who made frequent comments on the indecipherable exchange of conversation, seemed to go by the name of Kloog.
At first the notion that these hideous beings had a primitive language seemed singularly horrifying, for creatures so low on the evolutionary scale ought not to be endowed with the rudiments of intelligence or social organization. But, upon later reflection, it seemed undeniable that such was the case. And, after all, they did possess weapons, however crude and primitive, and wear something akin to the trappings of a warrior. Why, indeed, should they not possess the gift of speech?