Craddock hesitated.
"Funny. The symbols were stored up in my brain, though I never knew what they meant. You never really forget anything, you know, Brian. It's all there, in your subconscious, layer after layer of submerged memories that go back to the time your brain first became capable of storing up thoughts and impressions.
"Eventually I remembered. But I had to write it out. It had been written, not spoken. The Indio language is a degraded version of it. Just the same Parror figured it out. And he's going to waken the Flame, when he gets the equipment ready."
"That's dangerous," Raft said.
"I suppose it is. Still—" Craddock looked at his deformed hands. "—I risked it once. Blindly, of course. Parror knows what he's doing."
Raft thought of that tremendous power unleashed and raging unchecked through Paititi. "I wonder."
Craddock shivered a little. "I hope so, Brian! If the Flame ever gets out of control, the game is over."
"We'd better get out of here. This isn't a safe spot. Are you able to walk yet?"
"Sure, if you can help me a little."But Craddock was stiff weak, and he needed more than a little assistance as they retraced their steps through the saffron jungle. Raft supported him over the rougher spots, and he leaned heavily on the younger man's arm.
They kept a sharp eye out for Parror, though Raft felt certain that the Flame's guardian had left the Garden by now, intent upon gathering the equipment he would need for the ultimate experiment.
Nevertheless, there was still danger. Kharn—watched. Raft could sense the hidden, reptilian menace lurking in the yellow shadows under the trees.
They were almost at the river-gap when Raft touched Craddock's arm and they halted. There was something ahead, blocking their path. Not the nerve-bushes, but a sickly, saffron thing which lay like half-solid dough along the bank for twenty feet or more. Raft's brows contracted.
"It wasn't here before," he said slowly. "I don't like it."
Craddock straightened and drew a deep breath. "Guess I'll have to stand on my own feet for awhile. You may need both hands. See those pseudopods sliding this way? The thing's alive."
"An amoeba?"
"It isn't that. It's—there's no sharp line of demarcation between animal and vegetable here. It may be protoplasm but, I think, it's allied to those fern-mushrooms. If it caught us we'd probably get digested. However, it's slow."
"Yeah. But it's big. You feel up to running?"
Craddock drew himself together. "Okay. Where?"
"Let's move along the shallows here and then run like blazes for the tunnel."
Craddock nodded. They stepped into a cold, slow current and waded forward, feeling the water slide leisurely around their legs as they watched the jellied, saffron entity on the bank. They came abreast of it, and the tunnel-mouth lay only a little way ahead.
Raft began to think, as he splashed on, that they would make the tunnel without trouble after all. The monster of Kharn, he told himself, was not a creature of action. Its danger lay in the mind. It used purely mental power to attract and overpower its prey. Nor was it accustomed to highly developed minds, able to resist. Perhaps it had never needed to develop physical offense.
The water suddenly boiled just before them, sliding with nightmare slowness from a round saffron arm. A pseudopod, stretching after them from the bank, broke the surface. Another lifted out of the water close behind it.
They tried to circle farther out to avoid them, but the footing shelved off steeply into dangerous depths. The pseudopod reached inexorably out—farther—farther—and touched Raft.
It was filled with a living, hothouse warmth that made his flesh crawl. It wound about his waist, its moist heat striking inward against his skin as if digestion were already at work upon him.
He felt its strong pull toward the bank. He tried to get out his knife, but another coil came up from somewhere and laid a warm, wet embrace about his arms, fastening them to his sides. He felt himself being pulled shoreward, and struggled hard to keep his footing in the slow water.
"Hold firm, Brian!"
Craddock stumbled forward, lips set, fighting his own weakness.
He got the knife from Raft's belt with a violent surge of effort, and slashed at the tentacle. That yellowish, half-fungoid flesh gave like cheese. It had surface tension, apparently, but it was not more than half solid. Craddock slashed, and the pseudopods fell away and were washed slowly, slowly off down the current. The incident was like a nightmare in its gentle, deliberate, inexorable sluggishness.
The whole mass of the thing was sliding into the stream now.
"Come on," Raft said. "Can you make it?"
He seized Craddock's arm as they ran for the archway, the water sucking like glue around their feet.
On their right the entire bank seemed to be giving way and dropping toward them in a hungry, malignant pile that could afford to take its time.
Craddock's weakness hampered them. The water parted reluctantly under their splashing feet. It was like running through semi-liquid rubber, with the great, slow, yellow thing rolling its bulk forward to intercept their way.
The mouth of the tunnel opened before them, and the nerve-networks that acted as sentries made a quick, concerted, abortive motion to stop them, as if the whole valley answered a single brain, as perhaps it did. But Craddock slashed weakly at them with the knife, and when the blade had severed two or three the rest shrank and folded down out of harm's way as the two men plunged through.
"They've—stopped," Craddock panted, glancing back. "They won't—follow outside, I guess."
"Keep going," Raft urged him grimly. "No use taking chances now."
They stumbled on, out of the gloom at last into the cool green light from the leafy vault, far overhead, that roofed Paititi. It was like finding sanctuary.
But not quite. A quarter of a mile away, rounding one of the giant trees, a little column was moving steadily toward them. Raft groaned.
"Darum's soldiers. That looks like—yeah, it's Vann, all right. Come on, Craddock. Maybe we can make it."
"I—I can't." The older man staggered as he tried to keep up with Raft's quick strides. "Go on ahead. Don't mind about me."
Raft halted and shrugged. "They'd have caught us anyway. We'll wait, I guess. And fight it out." He touched the butt of the revolver, and watched that glittering column draw nearer.
Finally, the column deployed, showing two score of soldiers, wary, armed men who spread out to surround their prisoners. Vann's scarred, hard face was impassive.
"You're captives," he said. "There'll be time for a duel later, if you want, but the king needs you both now. So you are Brian Raft, after all, eh? And this.man is Craddock?" He stared curiously.
"What does Darum intend to do?" Raft asked. "Cut my throat?"
"No," Vann said. "Not yet, at least. Where is Parror?"
"Gone. I don't know where."
"We'll find him." Vann issued swift orders. Half of the group broke up, spreading out into the forest.
"Now we'll go back to Doirada Castle. Meanwhile, you can tell me, Raft, what lies in the Garden of Kharn. I'd have entered it to carry out my orders, but not with any pleasure. What devils lair in Kharn?"
"I'll tell you later," Raft said wearily. He let the revolver drop back into his pocket. "Right now, I'm too tired to care. Let's go back to Doirada."
CHAPTER XII.
POWER OF SCIENCE
QUIETLY THEY STOOD before the king, waiting, in the dim-lit room where Yrann's harp had sung. But it was brighter now. The veiled woman was not around. In her place Janissa sat on a cushioned couch near the dais. She had looked at Raft once, given him a cryptic smile, and turned back to watch Darum, who squatted cross-legged amid his silks.