Ylana of Callisto
Lin Carter
Book I
AFTER THE VICTORY
Chapter 1
THE ETERNAL FEMININE
IT is one of the ironies of the human condition that only in the darkest of times do the brightest and noblest traits of man come forth: endurance, courage, selfsacrifice.
I have seen this proved true in my own experience a thousand times, and I have observed it in the experience of others.
As, for example, in the adventures which befell Ylana of the Jungle Country and young Tomar after the fall of Kuur …
THE citadel of the Mind Wizards had fallen before the assault of the victorious warriors of golden Shondakor, and Tharkol, and seacoast Soraba.
The mighty armada of flying ships had traversed the known surface of Thanator, had explored the unknown mysteries of the Far Side of the planet, and had found at last the secret city of the Kuurians.
After a hard and desperate day-long battle, the warriors of the Three Cities had triumphed even over the super-science of the yellow dwarfs and their amazing ability to control the minds of men. One by one the cruel and cunning telepaths had been rooted out and cut down. Those they had taken captive were released, and among these was Tomar of Shondakor, a youthful scion of the House of Valadon.
The lad had served aboard the sky-ship Jalathadar on her first expedition against Zanadar the City in the Clouds, and had distinguished himself by his keen wits and youthful valor. The villainous Ulthar had disabled the craft, hiding himself so cleverly aboard the former ship of the Sky Pirates that none could find him. It had been Tomar who had stumbled upon the secret of his hiding-place and who had succeeded in slaying the Zanadarian traitor in hand-to-hand combat, thereby saving the vessel and all its crew.*
Thus had the boy first come to the attention of the high lords and royal courtiers of the Golden City, among them Lukor of Ganatol, the peppery and sharp-tongued Swordmaster who had been one of my first friends on the jungle Moon. Much later, the brave, handsome, serious youth had served during my own ill-fated voyage against Kuur.** Further adventures include our being carried off together by the rapacious bird-men, the Zarkoon, shortly after the fleet had flown over the Edge of the World into the unknown hemisphere.
While prisoners in the hanging cages of the Zarkoon, Tomar and I had first made the acquaintance of Ylana. The Jungle Maid was a daughter of a savage tribe which inhabited a hitherto unknown plateau to the east of the Zarkoon country. She had fled from the cave-dwellings of her tribe, she told us, rather than be forced into the arms of a brutal and repulsive warrior who had won her hand in marriage.
From this adventure we had managed to escape, but a whim of the inscrutable Fates decreed that our paths should soon be sundered. For while I and Tomar were taken captive by the Mind Wizards of Kuur, Ylana was rescued by my friends aboard the Xaxar, which had remained behind to search for Tomar and me. The Jungle Maid had returned with them to Shondakor, and had taken her place aboard the second mighty fleet of sky-ships during the final, triumphant expedition against Kuur.
And here is what happened to her, an adventure that I heard from her own lips and that I have set down very much in her own words, although with certain attitudes and descriptions and interpolations of my own added.
WHEN once the warriors descended into the Valley of Kuur amongst the towering Peaks of Harangzar, surging down the long tunnel that led into the subterranean lair of the Mind Wizards, Ylana of the Jungle Country was in the very forefront of them all.
For this expedition, the jungle Maid had reverted to the abbreviated costume she had worn in the wild, discarding at last the long and clinging courtly gown my beloved Princess Darloona had arrayed her in during her stay in Shondakor. Now the savage girl went clothed in her native dress―a brief garment of supple hide, the skin of some jungle cat that inhabited her plateau homeland. This scant garment draped around her slim hips, exposing her long, bare, golden legs, and stretched tightly over her small, nubile breasts, leaving her tanned throat and shoulders bare. About her neck was clasped a crude necklace of ivory fangs; a rough bracelet of hammered copper wire coiled about her upper arm. Her mane of untrimmed dark hair streamed down her back, and her small feet were encased in highlaced buskins of soft leather.
In her fists, the savage girl clenched long knives drawn from the twin scabbards bound with thongs to her upper thighs. With these weapons she was singu. larly adroit. In the Jungle Country the children of men do not long survive unless they are able to defend themselves against the dangerous predators who make that jungle their lair. And, even though Ylana was the only daughter of Jugrid, the chief of the Cave People, her folk were so close to the naked struggle for survival that she had been schooled in the arts of the hunt and of war, as much as any boy of the clan.
I shall not repeat here the general account of the battle for Kuur, that furious onslaught of the swordsmen of the Three Cities against the monstrous flesh robots of the Kuurians and the uncanny scienceweapons of the yellow dwarflings. For of these things you may read in another place’s … but a savage and desperate conflict it was; the men of Soraba and Tharkol and golden Shondakor fought their way step by step through the subterranean laboratories and chambers of the hidden citadel.
Ever Ylana pressed ahead, and by now the blades of her long knives were red with the gore of Kuurians and their hideous slave monsters. The one overpowering desire in the heart of the savage girl was to find the dungeons wherein were imprisoned the nobles and warriors who had survived the downfall of the first invasion fleet. Among those were Koja the Yathoon, Lankar, my American friend, Princess Zamara, Lukor of Ganatol, and, of course, I, Jandar. But of them all, the one captive foremost in the mind of Ylana was the boy Tomar. As yet she did not know whether the brave youth still lived or had been slain by the Mind Wizards. But she held in her heart a single ray of hope that he had survived the long days of cruel imprisonment in the Pits of Kuur.
Something had sprung up between the earnest, serious, easily embarrassed young Shondakorian officer and the savage girl during our adventures together after escaping from the Zarkoon bird-men. They were nearly the same age―sixteen or seventeen, I would say, although it has always been difficult for me to tell the ages of the people on this planet―and, although they came from different backgrounds, each had glimpsed in the heart of the other that elusive and indescribable quality that calls a man to a woman across all the world.
Bluff, burly Ergon joined Ylana in the final search, and little Taran, too, with the mighty form of Bozo the othode at his side. That immense, faithful beast sniffed us out, and the iron strength of Ergon forced open the doors to our cells, and one by one we emerged into the sourceless illumination that pervaded the Pits of Kuur.
Ylana had eyes only for Tomar, and came quickly to his side. The boy was pale from his underground imprisonment, and his garment was a mere scrap of rag wound about his loins. The rest of his body was naked, and filthy from the primitive conditions in which he had endured the long weeks of his captivity. But Ylana could see that he was whole and uninjured. A vast relief welled up within her heart, and emotion so filled her that her great, dark, long-lashed eyes were suddenly lustrous with the brilliance of unshed tears.
Her hand went out, tentatively, to touch him. Then, in the next moment, she turned what had been almost a caress into an impudent poke in the ribs. The eternal perversity of the female heart reasserted itself in a burst of mocking laughter.
“Wh-what’s so funny?” blurted Tomar, crimsoning.