“Then you must be very stupid! How could you not know of the Zarkoon? Did not the Elders of your tribe warn you a thousand times against venturing into their mountainous realm during the hours of darkness?”
Tomar exchanged a baffled glance with me. Obviously, he did not know what the jungle girl meant by the “Elders” of his “tribe.” A child of one of the most highly developed urban civilizations on this world of Thanator, he had never before encountered a member of a backwards and perhaps even savage people.
“You must be a very stupid boy, indeed,” Ylana observed coolly, a hint of mischief in her tones. Tomar flushed, stung by the taunting tone of her words. I suppressed a smile and held my tongue, but it amused me to discover that the flirtation-rituals of teen-alters vary little, even between the planets.
“If you’re so smart, how did the Zarkoon capture you?” Tomar retorted.
Now it was the girl’s turn to flush and bite her lower lip in vexation. I could not help noticing how white and even were those small teeth, nor how ripe and lush were those lips; and I would be very much surprised if the same observation had escaped Tomar’s notice, as well.
“I … I knew well of the danger,” she confessed, “but ventured hither nonetheless, to escape from my enemies. Alas, the terrible Zarkoon are as sharp of eye as the Elders warned …”
I cleared my throat. Something the girl had chanced to remark intrigued me. “Ylana, why did you say it was dangerous to trespass in these mountains during the hours of darkness?”
“Because it is then that the Zarkoon hunt, of course,” she replied, obviously amazed at our ignorance of what were, to her way of thinking, the common facts of everyday life.
“Do they not hunt by daylight, then?” I asked. She flashed me a sharp look in which amazement and contempt were commingled.
“Of course not! During the day they slumber here in their hidden nests beneath the crust of the world, for the brilliance of day is painful to them. During the period of darkness they are free to roam the upper world without harm … the boy is very ignorant of these matters, but you are a grown man, a hunter, perhaps even a chieftain? Is it possible that the Elders of your tribe did not warn you of the habits of the Zarkoon, either? I am very surprised to hear it…”
The look the girl turned on me was one of admiration, and, bathed in the regard of those candid violet eyes, I felt more than a trifle uncomfortable. The frank invitation in that admiring gaze may have been simulated merely for the purpose of further teasing my teen-aged companion, but married men such as myself do not feel comfortable when young girls turn such eyes upon them.
Pretending to ignore the flirtatious look, I thought about the implications of this newly-gained information. The birdwarriors of the Zarkoon had the round, fierce eyes of parrots, and perhaps they were lidless eyes, which would explain why the full radiance of day would cause them discomfort. If the Zarkoon were accustomed to sleeping through the hours of day, then the diurnal period would be ideal for any attempt at escape we might choose to make.
As daylight gradually illuminated more of the immense cavern wherein we were imprisoned, filtering down through the great hole in the rocky roof, we saw that the walls of the subterranean abyss were cut into ledges, probably by aeons of geological action. Thereupon we could barely discern huge nests of woven reeds or sticks. These were scattered about the ledges in clusters, perhaps representing family groups, if the Zarkoon were high enough up the scale of social evolution to have arrived at the concept. Doubtless the bird-warriors, together with their females and their young, were now curled in slumber in those shadowy perches.
Looking down, it was obvious we would not find it easy to accomplish our escape, for we were suspended very near the roof . of the immense cavern, and the rocky floor, strewn with white bones, streaked with oily droppings, and littered with accumulated filth, was hundreds of feet below our level. Even if we could escape from the cages wherein the Zarkoon had imprisoned us, the slightest slip would hurl us into this chasm. To fall from this height would mean, if not certain death, at least broken bones.
However, I noticed that our cages were suspended rather near one wall of the huge cavern, and that the closest of the rocky ledges was at our level, or slightly below it, and about twenty or twenty-five feet away. The nearness of the ledge was tantalizing … it was almost near enough to be within our possible attainment, yet distant enough to make the reaching of it very difficult, hazardous in the extreme, and quite likely an impossible feat.
While I was busy pondering these matters, Tomar and the jungle maid had been conversing in low tones. The girl belonged to a primitive tribe which dwelt upon a jungle plateau not very distant from these mountains. The Zarkoon were the natural enemies of the Jungle People, and had preyed upon them for untold centuries. Further questioning from Tomar elicited less and less information from Ylana, for the girl seemed unable to comprehend that we were not huntsmen or warriors from a savage tribe similar to her own, but the representatives of a higher level of civilization. She was astonished and somewhat contemptuous of our thorough lack of information concerning the hazards and perils of this barbaric world, and her growing scorn for Tomar was expressed both by her contemptuous expression and by the scathing tone of her voice. She evidently considered the youth at my side a pampered and babied favorite who had been unaccountably shielded from exposure to the harsh realities of what were, to her, the common facts of life.
Her own questions were keen and incredulous. When Tomar attempted to describe the realm from which we had come, she was sharp in her disbelief. A walled stone city, indeed! How could such structures be raised out in the open without being exposed to the savage depredations of the Zarkoon? And when Tomar strove to explain that in the city of Shondakor, fifty thousand men, women and children dwelt in peaceful harmony, she responded with shrill derision. How could so many chieftains dwell side by side without preying on one another’s women? What vast herds must roam the jungles of our land, in order to sustain such an immense populace! When Tomar fumblingly tried, to describe the area of farms and fields which surrounded the Golden City for many miles, Ylana’s disbelief became openly abusive. Tomar could not grasp the fact, but I understood that Ylana’s tribe apparently had yet to discover the science of agriculture, and that the very concept of farmers growing produce for the consumption of the city-dwellers was completely beyond her comprehension.
“May I ask how you came to be captured by the Zarkoon?” I inquired. “Were you captured alone, or had you companions?”
“I was alone,” the girl said with a sniff.
“But where were you going―and why?”
She shrugged. Then, with a little expression eloquent of distaste, she explained. “The Elders of my tribe would have given me as mate to a warrior whom I despised,” she said. “Rather than endure his embraces, I fled in the night, hoping to find a haven among my mother’s folk, the River People. But by night the Zarkoon range far afield, and they attacked me from the skies as I crossed the Stone Hills near the borders of the region of my mother’s people. I was alone and had no warrior to defend me; however, my father had taught me somewhat of the arts of war and of the hunt, and thus I was fortunate enough to slay two of the monsters with my bow before they seized and disarmed me. How many did you slay?”
“As near as I can recall, we each slew five or six of the bird-warriors,” I said. Her eyes widened in exaggerated unbelief.
“This boy slew that many?” she sniffed. “Doubtless they were females, or fledglings.”