Zaraf’s face flushed an angry red, but without another word, he turned and marched up the steps to the dais. Neal’s eyes followed him and then he saw Jane.
Pale and regal, she was standing next to the dais, her arms bound behind her. Neal felt a cold sweat break out on his body. They couldn’t let her watch. It wasn’t human.
Zaraf turned and smiled down at Neal.
“Remember to be your most heroic,” he said mockingly. “We have distinguished company present.”
The crimson-tuniced guards stepped forward now and grabbed Neal by the arms. His eyes were on Jane, and he hardly felt them shoving him toward the rack. He was trying desperately, frantically to tell her with his eyes that he loved her and would always love her, wherever he might be. He had never said the things he wanted to say to her and this was his last opportunity.
Suddenly a clear, terrible scream of anguish sounded through the vast, packed throne room.
“You can’t! You can’t! Let me die with him!” It was Jane sobbing and crying frantically, stumbling down the steps of the dais toward the execution rack.
“You fool!” shouted Zaraf. “Come back here!”
Leaping from his chair he plunged down the steps after her. Shouts and yells sounded through the throne room, as the natives lent their voices to the excitement.
Neal turned at Jane’s scream. The two guards holding him relaxed their grip in the general confusion. With a sudden writhing twist Neal was free. He was weakened from his exposure in the desert, but his right hook was still a dangerous weapon. His first swing caught the guard off balance and dumped him in a complete somersault to the ground. Two more guards rushed at him, but he sidestepped them with a quick leap. As he landed he felt something jab into his thigh with an agonizing pain. Instinctively his hand moved to the spot, his fingers touched a slim, hard object close to his thigh. A surge of hope shot through him, not that he could hope to win, but that at least he could put up an excellent account for himself.
The two guards were closing in on him now, but before they could grab him, his hand flashed from his pocket grasping the strange, diamond-studded knife that he had first seen in the Cairo curio shop and secondly, when he had found it under the canvas flooring of Jane’s tent. He had shoved it into his pocket then and forgotten it. His hand closed about the torso-handle of the knife now, and the diamond necklace that topped the torso flashed in a thousand scintillating sparkles as he drew his arm back to slash out at the two guards who were pressing him.
But his arm did not fall! It remained rigidly aloft as though frozen.
For the two guards were staring at the knife, fearfully, tremblingly. Hoarse, guttural pleas sounded inarticulately from their throats as they backed away from him, terror-stricken. When they were eight feet from him they suddenly hurled themselves to the floor and grovelled there, mouthing strange incantations. Neal wheeled, and as he flashed the knife about his head, the other guards dropped to their knees, their voices blending with the first two guards.
Taking advantage of this sudden, but inexplicable break, Neal leaped toward the base of the dais where Jane was struggling helplessly with Zaraf.
Horjak, the new ruler, saw Neal charge toward the dais brandishing the scintillating knife in his hand like an avenging angel. With a soft moan of terror he sank to his knees, babbling incoherently.
Zaraf flung Jane to one side and leaped past Neal. He sprinted to the oval enclosure where the guards were moaning and grovelling on their faces.
“Get up!” he screamed. “Get up you yellow hounds. Grab the prisoner and tear him apart with your hands. Get up! Get up!”
But he might have been talking to lumps of clay or sodden logs for all the attention the guards paid his hysterical commands. There was a swelling moaning noise coming now from the rows of packed seats. On their knees and on their faces the natives moaned and chanted their mysterious mumbling incantations.
Neal clasped Jane to him and slashed her bonds with the glittering knife, then he jumped from the dais and started after Zaraf.
Zaraf saw him coming. With one last frantic scream at the oblivious natives, he turned blindly and dashed under the rack. His foot caught on a silken cord and hurled him to the ground, but he clambered quickly to his feet.
Then he screamed — madly and hysterically, once.
Neal saw it happen, saw the complete, incredibly horrible death by which Max Zaraf paid for his sins.
His foot had tripped the knife release under the rack, and when he sprang to his feet, the heavy, speeding knives — poised for Neal’s execution — flashed downward with the devastating force of razor-sharp cleavers. Twelve blades there were, and each one found at least part of its target.
Shaken, Neal made his way to Jane’s side. She was slumped at the foot of the dais, sobbing. He slipped his arm around her shoulder.
“It’s all over darling,” he murmured softly. “I think we can straighten things out now.”
He looked up as a calm, wise looking old man with long white hair approached slowly.
“I am a friend,” the old man said softly. “I am not afraid of the knife of Sali, the Goddess of Death. For I gave it to Professor Manners when he was here so many years ago. It was a pledge of our friendship and he always promised that he would bring it with him on his return.”
“Why are the people afraid of it?” Neal asked.
The old man shrugged.
“People are afraid of things they do not understand. Years, centuries ago, it was believed by my people that Death was a woman who chose her victims in the dark and killed them with just such a knife as you hold in your hand. That knife was venerated by our people and prayed to, that it might spare them its sting. It was believed invincible.
“As ruler, I discouraged such outmoded beliefs, and to further eliminate the belief I gave the sacred knife of Sali to Professor Manners. But I have been deposed as ruler, and under the influences of barbaric customs once again, you see how quickly my children revert to the beliefs and customs of their fathers.”
“A lucky thing for us they did,” Neal said. “What goes now? Will you take your job back as ruler around here?”
The white haired old man smiled.
“If my people want me,” he said simply, “I will be happy to retain my authority.”
Neal put his hand under Jane’s chin and lifted her head up.
“No more crying now,” he whispered. “Everything’s all set. The regular ruler is stepping back into the job and he’s a great old guy. Why — why I’ll bet he can even marry people!”
Adopted Son of the Stars
First published in Fantastic Adventures, March 1941.
Wilbur Wunch trudged wearily homeward through the wet, dismal night. His shoes squished at each tired step, and his narrow shoulders hunched against the penetrating dampness.
It was gloomy, depressing weather, and its lowering gloom settled like a somber pall over Wilbur’s slightly frayed soul.
He looked up at the rolling, leaden sky and thought of his cheerless spouse, Wilhelmina. He thought of her first because there was something in the ominous banks of dull, gray clouds that reminded him of Wilhelmina’s grim, frowning visage and secondly because the heavens always reminded him of Wilhelmina’s favorite hobby — astrology.
Astrology! How he hated even the word.
It was his wife’s second favorite topic. Her first was a sort of continuous rambling recrimination against Wilbur for not making more money. When she was not berating him for his lack of money-making ability she was casting horoscopes, visiting astrologists and mooning over the stars and their orbits.