Interminable hours later, night came down across the World of the Green Star and we eased the skysled out of its place of concealment, climbed aboard, and took to the air again. Zarqa had very carefully memorized by daylight the route and thus without difficulty navigated virtually blind to a safe position far down the branch on which the Yellow City was constructed. Janchan dismounted and drew a dark, concealing cloak about him. The stalwart princeling had carefully removed every jeweled badge from his trappings and, clad in plain, worn leather, with a basket-hilted rapier of common design, could presumably pass as a wandering mercenary warrior without question, at least under cursory inspection.
He had his story carefully prepared. Doubtless by now word had spread to the farthermost cities of the impending war between Ardha and Phaolon. It would only be natural for homeless men—rogues, exiles, wandering outlaws—to gather for the looting of Phaolon, which could not for long hold out against the warrior legions of the Yellow City. One more foot-weary mercenary would not be suspected in a city where many hundreds must be now have come to enlist in the hordes of the conqueror.
He turned to face us, his features hidden in the gloom beneath a heavy hood. He waved one brawny arm in farewell and I saw the flash of his white teeth as he grinned.
“Farewell for a time, my friends! Zarqa, watch for my signal and be ready at need! Karn, be a good boy, now, and help our comrade guard the sled! When next we meet, it shall be to carry the Princess Niamh to safety. Farewell!”
He turned on his heel and strode lithely away. In a few moments he had vanished in the gloom.
And he was gone.
And I was utterly miserable.
Zarqa and I made our return flight to the encampment we had chosen without incident. While I doubt not that the chevaliers and guardsmen of Ardha are doubly vigilant by night, no human eye, however keen, can with ease penetrate the unbroken gloom of the nighttime on this cloud-enshrouded planet.
We moored our craft and made a light dinner. I was glum and silent, brooding on my misfortunes. If only I had not taken the body of an adolescent boy, but awaited my chance to enter the form of a full-grown man! As for Zarqa, the kindly old fellow did everything in his power to cheer me up and to get me out of my brooding despondency. I fear I made short reply to his conversational sallies and his attempts to jolly me out of my black gloominess. When we finally decided to call it a day and turn in, I’m sure it was to his relief. A sullen boy who replies only in glum monosyllables makes pretty bad company.
I lay awake, staring at the canopy of golden leaves above my head, for an hour or more.
My position was indescribably difficult to endure. I had envisioned myself, I think quite naturally, as the central figure in an heroic quest to free the woman I loved from the enemies who held her prisoner. But, through the mischance of choosing an immature body, I found myself now cast in the role of subordinate, forced to stand idly by, while another young man, bold and daring and gallant, went venturing off alone into danger, to rescue the heroine of my adventure!
Oh, it was intolerable. I tossed and turned, unable to sleep, until at last I settled down and was silent. Poor Zarqa could do little more that try to ignore my mood. The gaunt, golden-winged creature was oddly miscast in the role of one in loco parentis to a scrawny teenager who wanted to be a hero. I’m sure he was relieved when I finally ceased my restless tossing and composed myself for slumber.
Dawn broke goldenly in the skies of the world of giant trees. Zarqa slept lightly, as do his kind; for a time he lay there, his immense and brilliant purple eyes misted with dreams of vanished splendors and empires of the past. At length he rose swiftly and limberly, performed the cursory ablutions of a race that imbibe nutriment but lightly, and even then but once in fifty days, and, leaving me to sleep undisturbed, turned to busy himself with preparing my breakfast.
The Green Star climbed higher in the heavens. Shafts of luminous jade drove down through immense canopies of golden leafage to illuminate the world of colossal intertangled branches and soaring boles. Immense zaiphs with wings like rigid fans of sparkling mica or sheeted opal dipped and whirled through the sun-shafts, busily hunting the smaller insect life which were their prey. No disturbance came from the Yellow City in the distance, within whose winding and labyrinthine ways the gallant young Prince Janchan went about his secret mission.
The food prepared, Zarqa assembled it on a makeshift tray made of a chip of scaly, dark-red bark, and set it out for me. Still there came no sound or movement from my pallet. At length, deciding I had slept my fill, the golden-winged being stalked over to the entrance of the tent and twitched it open…
But I was not in there!
No expression crossed his solemn face as Zarqa looked swiftly about, discovering that my harness, cloak, boots, sword-belt, and girdle were also missing.
Chapter 15
THE CRIMSON SIGN
Zarqa was ill-experienced in the ways of adolescent human boys; however, the gaunt Kalood had by this time learned enough of human nature to suspect how deeply wounded I was at not being permitted to accompany Prince Janchan on his adventure. It was obvious to him that I had stolen away from our camp in the darkness of the night, for an adventure of my own.
He knew how sorely Janchan would grieve, if anything happened to me during my ill-advised attempt to enter the city. The Phaolonian princeling would blame himself for having been the inadvertent cause of any peril that befell me.
For a time the tall Kalood stood motionless, thinking and pondering the matter deeply.
At length, he determined that the only thing to do was to go after me. Gathering up a few items of his gear, Zarqa fashioned a rude baldric which he slung over one shoulder. To it he attached the scabbard of the zoukar.
Then the sad-eyed Kalood took to the air!
The golden-feathered, yet bat-like wings were fully functional, it seemed. Drumming against the air, they bore him from the surface of the branch into the upper air; then, folding his wings, he fell like a plummet into the depths. Like a golden spear he clove the air, head downward, keen and luminous purple orbs scrutinizing the down-slope of the branchlet as he flashed past it. To the keen eyes of Zarqa the Kalood it was simplicity itself to discern the signs of human passage… the place where my boot-heel had scuffed away a patch of mold… the twiglet I had grasped, breaking under my weight… the crumpled bit of bark on which I had rested my full weight.
He descended to the stem of the branchlet upon which our camp was built. Here he spread his drumming wings, breaking his fall, searching the upper surface of the limb for further human spoor. Here, of course, I had gone erect and the signs of my passing were fewer.
To a lower limb he dropped, a vertiginous fall into the vast abyss down into whose depths the colossal trunk of the tree dwindled. Here he indeed found signs of my descent, for here I had been forced to employ the length of Live Rope I had taken from the sled’s store, and the semi-living glassy coil had bitten deep into spongy bark to support my weight.
And on that lower branch he found a fearful thing.