By the Light of the Green Star

Chapter 9 At the Bottom of the World

While, all unknown to us, these dark and terrible events had enveloped my comrades in the Flying City of Calidar, Klygon and I were descending into the unbroken gloom of that mysterious abyss of unknown horrors which lay at the foot of the sky-tall trees.

Mad with panic from terror of the zawkaw, our dragonfly-steeds, completely beyond control, hurtled downward into the shadows that gathered about the floor of the gigantic forest.

True, I had managed to destroy the immense blue hawk-thing by means of the death-flash. But the small brains of our zaiphs are able to contain but one idea at a time. And a billion years of being preyed upon by the great indigo hunting birds of the treetops had bred deep into the very nature of the zaiphs a blind, unreasoning terror of the monstrous hawks.

The tiny brain of our flying steeds, therefore, contained but one thought.

And that thought was—flight!

Down and down and down they fled, resisting our every effort to bring them under our control. I tugged and jerked on the reins with all my strength, but to little or no avail. Below me, dwindling in the depths, and vanishing from my sight in the gathering gloom, Klygon the Assassin was similarly occupied. But naught that I could do slowed in the slightest the terror-stricken descent of the maddened zaiph.

The dangers that confronted us were very real.

I was not thinking of the shadowy, monstrous horrors which crawled and slithered through the gloom of the ultimate abyss, according to the mythology of the jewelbox cities of the upper terraces. Those slobbering nightmarish monstrosities might or might not exist—I neither knew, nor, at the moment, did I really care.

No—the fear which possessed me was of another, and a very different, danger. And that was simply that, in their panic and madness, the giant insects we rode would dash us to death against the floor of the forest.

Within mere moments, the last faint gleam of daylight would be lost—and we would fly into a region of impenetrable darkness. Whatever obstructions lay beneath us, directly in our path, we would not be able to see, neither could we avoid.

Surely, there might be low branches, or great tangled roots, or even jagged and gigantic stones there at the bottom of the world. Against these our maddened zaiphs, in their blindness, might dash themselves to death.

However, there was nothing we could do to avoid the perils of the black Abyss below.

So we flew down—down—down!

Darkness closed about us-thick, black, and suffocating.

Only with great difficulty do the sunbeams of the Green Star pierce the great veil of clouds which envelop the world whereon I now dwelt.

And the shafts of radiance which do manage to penetrate the silvery clouds that shield the planet from the fierce light of its fiery emerald primary, those beams are transmuted to a dim green-gold luminance as they filter through the immense masses of foliage which are borne up by the branches of the gigantic trees.

The farther you descend through the layers of branches, the dimmer become the vagrant wisps of green-gold light which have filtered down through the leaves.

And at the very bottom of the world, among the tangled roots of the colossal, mile-tall trees, light does not even exist. There is found only an unexplored region of utter blackness—a blind netherworld, ruled by unthinkable monsters, where the clear and brilliant light of day never penetrates.

Down into that black Abyss we hurled!

I struck an ice-cold, yielding surface, which shattered before my hurtling flight.

The impact stunned me into insensibility.

In the next moment, icy waters closed over my head. And I sank into the lightless depths like a stone.

But the cold shock of the sudden immersion had the incidental effect of rousing me from my swoon.

I opened my lips to cry out, and swallowed a quantity of cold, fresh water. And in the next moment, I was kicking and struggling to free myself from the dead weight to which I was bound, and which was dragging me down into the black deep.

The zaiph I rode must have been drowned already, for it did not struggle as it sank into the cold waters. The enormous dragonflies of the world of the giant trees are light and fragile, their bodies poorly designed to absorb such an impact.

It was the custom of zaiph-riders to strap themselves securely into the saddle, lest they be dislodged from their seat in flight. You can readily understand that falling out of the saddle is something to be avoided at all costs, especially when you are riding on the back of an enormous dragonfly two or three miles above the ground. Thus the custom of strapping oneself into the saddle, which until that moment I had never had cause to regret.

But now, as the dead weight of my steed dragged me down into the unknown depths of the lake or sea or whatever it was, I fought against the straps like a madman.

And all the time my lungs were bursting, my brain reeling with pain, and my entire being consumed with a raging lust for-air.

After what seemed like an endless eternity of nightmare, I was suddenly free of the maddening grip of the straps. I kicked wildly, driving to the surface, and burst free into the open air. Treading water, I sucked clear, clean, fresh air into my starved lungs, clinging dizzily to consciousness.

After a few moments I regained control of myself and struck out for shore—if there was, indeed, a shore. For I could see absolutely nothing. The world around me was one of utter darkness; I was immersed in suffocating blackness. It was a nightmare—it was as if I had suddenly been struck totally blind.

I swam through the water, which was invisible to me, gasping, battered, beginning to panic in this lightless Abyss of black, unseen terror. The darkness had so disoriented me that for a moment I thought I was going mad—

Then my outstretched hand brushed against something wet and slimy—but blissfully solid.

I clutched hold of the thing, and clung to it with that desperation which a drowning man—such as I had nearly been—is said to cling to a straw.

It was rounded, whatever it was, with a rough, corrugated surface sleek and slimed with some sort of mossy growth. But its upper surface lifted a few feet above the level of the lake, and that was all that mattered to me. I reached up, fumbled about for a handhold, found a knob or boss, and dragged myself up out of the black cold waters.

Atop the slick, rounded thing I hauled myself into a sitting position and just squatted there, catching my breath, resting for a bit until my heart ceased its mad beating against my ribs and the incipient fit of madness into which I had almost fallen faded from my numb and dizzy brain.

Striking out blindly with my arms, I touched other rounded surfaces, similarly corrugated and slimed. Feeling with my fingers, I traced their rondure and dimension. It seemed to me that what I was touching was insensate, for I sensed no movement, and the surfaces my hands encountered were hard and unyielding, although slick with slimy growths. But I also fancied that whatever it was I was prodding was unnatural, for rocks should be rough and edged and jagged, while the things my hands were exploring were smooth and rounded or coiling in some strange manner.

It was maddening, not being able to see, except with my sense of touch alone. How I would have welcomed the faintest gleam of light, however dim, in that unbroken blackness that clung around me, pressing (it seemed) against my very eyes like an impalpable weight.

But light there was not, so I fumbled in the dark, groping along the curves of hard, slick roundness, with no conception of what it was that I touched, nor of where I was, nor of whatever danger or menace might be close beside me in the unbroken gloom.

Because of my blindness I felt terribly, sickeningly vulnerable. In my present helpless condition, anything might slink or slither upon me out of the blackness. Some vast, predatory reptile might, even now, be very near me… sensing my presence, my nearness… its flickering tongue tasting the dank, chill air… searching for me in the gloom with subtle and mysterious senses… drinking in hungrily the odor of hot blood and warm, living flesh. The thought was maddening!

But even more maddening was my helplessness. At a single stroke I had become as a cripple, for as the gloom robbed me of the sight of my eyes, so too did it unman me. Only a moment before my fall I had been strong, vigorous, unafraid. With my longsword in my hand, pit me against a horde of enemies and, at least, I could go down fighting …

But now—now the strength of my lithe body was useless, and my swordsman’s skill futile. How can you fight against a thing you cannot see? Your blade, however swift and sure, cuts empty air. Yes, it was like being crippled.

That sound! That splash—something was in the black waters, something lived and moved out there in the lightless lake from whose cold embrace I had so narrowly dragged myself. My skin crept as I strained every nerve—listening, listening. Was it coming nearer—approaching me?—or was it going farther away, receding into the unknown depths? Curse this blackness that weighed upon my eyes, blinding me, robbing me of all ability to defend myself with whatever skills and strengths I possessed!

Again, that disturbance in the water. And this time it was definitely nearer to me than before. My eyes ached as I stared into the black gloom, straining to pierce the blind darkness which enveloped me. And my imagination conjured up a thousand ghastly images, remembering the nameless monsters who dwelt in this black Abyss, if nightmare myths were true.

The ripple of something gliding through water! I pictured in my sightless brain some gigantic serpent, cold eyes burning through the gloom, stealthy coils sliding suave and silent through the chill waters as it sought out its helpless, defenseless prey—myself?

Then something touched the rounded surface on which I crouched. I felt the subtle, small impact by some sense rarely used until this moment. And cold perspiration burst out on my brow and my stomach knotted in a tension of fear—not fear of fighting for my life, not even fear of death. Fear of the unknown; fear of something that I could not see …

Hardly daring to breathe, I slid my longsword from its scabbard, and sat there motionless, straining every sense in hopes of penetrating the blackness around me …

And then it touched my leg and I shrieked and struck out blindly

Chapter 10 The White, Crawling Thing

A hoarse, guttural cry rang out in my ears. Water splashed. The cold, wet grip on my leg loosed, although my blind sword-stroke only sliced through empty air.

The next moment the slimy, rounded thing on which I knelt trembled as an unseen weight heaved itself dripping from the lake.

And then I heard a faint, weary voice groan.

“Gods and Avatars, what a black, stinking—”

I gasped aloud, and the voice cut off instantly. Then; “… Lad? Be you there… ?”

I almost fainted from the sudden relief of tension.

“Klygon? Was it you grabbed my leg, then? I almost put my sword through you.”

“Then it was a leg I took hold of! Blessed me! I thought I’d seized upon some crawling horror in the dark—curse this black gloom! I can’t see an inch beyond me nose. Where are you, lad—give me your hand—”

We fumbled through the damp gloom, and caught hold of each other. The little Assassin was soaked to the skin as I was, his black garments slimy with muck from the lake. But he seemed all in one piece, and no more the worse for the surprise ducking than I was. Joy gusted through us both; I clapped his shoulder, laughing a little; he squeezed my arm with rough affection, cursing a variety of gods, saints, immortals, tutelary geniuses and the other quaint denizens of the Laonese heaven.

“Sages and Demigods!” he growled hoarsely. “I had a tight time of it there for a while, boy. Thought my cursed zaiph would fetch me up against the bottom of the world, before the ‘cursed thing would stop! Aye, and if ‘twere not for this wet-muck we landed on, ‘twould of been broken bones and busted skulls for us both, at very least! Ah, ‘tis good to touch you, lad! ‘Tis food and drink, having a stout comrade by your side in this black hole! However do we get back into the light, the upper world again? My steed’s still down there, somewhere, in the black water, same as yours. We can’t fly; that’s certain sure. And we can’t climb, leastways I can’t! These old bones are weary-worn…”

I laughed and said something to the effect that we should take one problem at a time, not all of them at once. Time enough later on to worry over ways to regain our place in the safety of the middle terraces. Right now we were worn out, trembling with the after-effects of our mad fall, and soaked through, cold and hungry and tired. What we needed first was a safe place of refuge, then a bit of fire to dry us out, and something to eat.

“And light!” he groaned. ” ‘Tis like being struck stone blind, this place. Old Klygon, bless his weary wits, feels like a blind grub crawling about in the black bottom of everything. Curse me for a doddering grandsire, I’d sell me place in The World Above for a wee bit of candle no bigger’n me thumb!”

Well, there was no use wasting breath on wishes. So, first, we tried to find out where we were. Going slowly and carefully, we went out farther on the strange, slick, rounded surface, but in the wrong direction, as it proved. For it dwindled in size and sank under the waters of the lake.

In the other direction, however, the hard coiled things grew larger and ascended. I began to conjure up a mental picture of the thing we were on, the farther I crawled along it. In short, I came to realize it was, simply, a root. A root as thick as a man stands tall, and about a quarter of a mile long, but still just a root.

And, of course, it would have to be. For after all, we were at the foot of one of the giant trees which soared miles above us. Such arboreal Everests were surely rooted in the black earth, and their roots would have to be immense in proportion to their towering heights.

Finally we found ourselves on what seemed to be dry land, much higher up the slope. Underfoot dead leaves the size of blankets squelched in rotten muck, and we brushed against toadstools or some similar monstrous fungi that sprouted overhead, looming as tall as fir trees would, back in my native Connecticut. The stench of stale mud and putrid decay was thick about us; moisture hung thick in the black air as any fog; but gradually a dim light grew around us. Was it only that, after a time, our eyes grew adjusted to the pitch-black night, which was not so absolute as we had thought at first? Or was it the dim phosphorescence of decay our straining eyes at length perceived? Probably it was a little of both—at any rate, the dimmest ghost of light we sensed about us, and by the faint glow we discovered we could just barely see.

Shelter was our most basic requirement, and luckily there was no lack of it. The tangled roots of the giant tree made half a hundred hiding places as they coiled and tangled and intertwined. Clambering about the twisted root-system, slipping and sliding on the slick, slimy rootlets, we chose a choice tree-cave. A double-whorl of roots coiled well above water level afforded us a smallish hollow space wherein we could rest without fear of disturbance. The entranceway was narrow, and could be easily blocked by employing shinglelike slabs of bark which lay about, littering the root-area. There was nothing we could do about drying out our clothes, however; for that, we should have to wait for time and our own body-heat to do the job for us. But at least we could rest from our ordeals and recover our strength in relative safety.

There was no lack of drinking water, with a lake-sized puddle of unknown dimensions right at our doorstep, so to speak; and, so long as we did not mind the rather brackish flavor of the scummed pool, we would not have to travel far to quench our thirst.

Food, however, was an immediate problem. In the midterraces aloft there was seldom a problem of food supplies, for edible berries the size of ripe pumpkins, and nuts like bushel baskets grew on the giant trees of the forest, to say nothing of the various kinds of wild game which afforded a wide variety of meat. But here at the bottom of the world, nuts and berries were rare if not unknown, and the species of game with which we were familiar doubtless did not come into this benighted region.

Thus when, at length, hunger drove us from our cozy cave, we faced the problem of hunting unfamiliar game in regions cloaked in almost unbroken gloom, on footing made precarious by reason of the slimy muck of the lake.

For a time we prowled about, climbing the roots, eager to spot game. But none came our way, although undoubtedly grubs and worms and other creatures dwelt here in the realm of darkness. Hunting was a tricky business, because it was easy to lose yourself in the gloom, which made one coiling root resemble every other. So we kept within hailing distance of each other, and blazed our trail with our blades. This trailblazing proved an easy trick—all we had to do was to scrape away a patch of the slimy mold that encrusted everything around us.

We searched for hours, finding nothing more edible than mushrooms. On Earth these spicy delicacies are thumb-sized; here on the World of the Green Star, of course, they were as huge as Christmas trees. It was easy enough to slice away portions large enough to stave off the pangs of hunger, although—raw and bleached white and therefore rather tasteless—they proved singularly unsatisfying fare. We chewed down the moist, flavorless fungi and made the best of things. At least they served to fill the belly, if they failed to delight the palate.

Curled up in our little cave amid the roots, we dozed, trying to sleep. The occasional splash and slither of disturbed water came to us as we sprawled in the darkness.

“What think you, lad? There must be fish in yonder lake,” Klygon mused plaintively. I yawned, trying not to think how tasty fresh fish would be just then.

“Maybe so,” I said. “But, if so, they would be several times larger than a man. I’ve had enough of that lake, thank you. You can try fishing, if you like.”

He shivered distastefully.

“Thank you, lad, but let’s leave it for the morrow. With belly full, even of tasteless fare, I be only speculating. Still… something’s making that splash, now and again. Mayhap with a good spear…”

“We don’t have any spears, good or otherwise.”

“I know, I know! But another few meals on that stringy muck, and I’ll be chewing bark, for want of something tastier.”

All in all, we spent a damp, hungry, uncomfortable night.

But the next day proved even worse.

It was a hoarse squall of terror that aroused me from my rest—if “rest” is quite the word I want for a night spent wedged into a damp hole, curled up on hard, uneven wood.

I scrambled out of the cave, snatching up my blade. Klygon wasn’t there. Either he had arisen before me, and had gone out, deciding to let me sleep, or he had left our hiding place but temporarily, to answer an urgent call of nature.

Crawling out, I straightened swiftly—trying to ignore the stiffness in my aching limbs—and peered around in the darkness for the source of the frightened cry that had awakened me.

It was Klygon, scrambling and slipping and sliding down the root-tangle from somewhere above, with the reckless speed only panic can produce.

A moment later I saw what was chasing him, and tasted the oily, acid tang of fear myself. For, crawling and undulating after Klygon came an immense thing that struck cold dread into my heart.

Its flesh was gelid and sickly white, and it glowed with faint luminescence in the dark, like the wan phosphorescence of something putrid with decay. I could make out no features at first in its writhing hugeness, but then I saw its faceless head and drooling, toothless maw.

It was a wom—a worm the size of an elephant, and half as long as a freight train!

I thought to myself, with wry humor even through my sense of peril, that if Klygon had sought to scare tip some breakfast, he should at least have tried to come up with something that was not going to make a breakfast of him!

And the next second I froze with astonishment.

For the great, slithering worm was dreadful enough, but—this worm had a human rider.

Chapter 11 Delgan of the Isles

Klygon came slipping and falling down to where I stood, clinging to a twisted rootlet like a banister, staring up in awe and wonder at the immense wriggling worm. The little man’s homely face was pallid and sweating with fear, his eyes wild.

“Into the hole, lad, there be more of the horrors,” he panted, and made to dodge past me into the low-roofed entrance of our hiding place. I gripped his arm, holding him back.

“Not there!” I warned. “There’s only one way in or out. We’d be trapped—and the worm-head might be small enough to get in after us!”

He shuddered, eyes glazing. Perhaps he pictured the nightmare image those words conjured up in my own brain—that spasmodic, drooling mouth thrusting in upon us as we crouched helpless in the dark.

I sprang over the edge of the root on which I stood, and went slipping and sliding down to a lower surface, with Klygon panting on my heels. The dim putrid phosphorescence strengthened about us. Looking back I saw with a thrill of horror four or five more monster forms slithering down through the tangled roots after us. Each had a human rider clinging to its back, and each could move far more swiftly than we could.

It was only a matter of time.

And not much time, at that.

They cornered us down by the water’s edge. We had our backs to the wall, for there was nowhere to run and we could not risk immersion in that scum-coated lake in whose midnight depths unknown creatures splashed and hunted.

The wet, working mouths descended toward us, slobbering hungrily, panting a vile, stinking fetor in our faces. But the riders had the monster-worms under control—I glimpsed something like rude reins made of thorny strands—and the riders tugged back upon these, jerking the obscene mouths away from us.

In the next moment the riders slid down from their perches and fell upon us. They were hulking brutes, naked savages, their heavy, anthropoid limbs white as milk, their degraded, snarling features half hidden by tangled locks of filthy white hair. They were true albinos, I saw with a brief, momentary spark of curiosity, their small eyes red-pupiled and doubtless weak, glaring savagely through matted, coarse manes of dead white hair.

But, for all that, they were strong as apes and bore the two of us down before their rush. Armed with wooden clubs and stone axes, they swarmed upon us, and over us, for all our flickering blades. We had poor footing, there on the slimy moss, to make a stand. With the scummed lake at our backs and our feet sliding in the slick moss, we could not put up much of a fight. Even so, I sent my point slicing through the throat of one grunting albino savage and small Klygon, cursing and sweating, stabbed another to the bone.

But with brute strength and sheer weight of numbers they overwhelmed us. The swords were wrested from us. Heavy clubs rose and fell, rose and fell, and we knew no more.

The last thing I heard was Klygon’s voice, shrill and raw with rage, calling on the saints and godlings of the innumerable Laonese pantheon. But he called in vain. And darkness drowned me in smothering layers …

When I woke it was with a roaring headache, to find myself lying in noisome filth, the stench of ordure strangely mingled with the smell of wet loam thick in my nostrils.

I blinked my eyes into focus, and found myself in a subterranean cavern, walled with beaten earth through which hairy, glistening white rootlets crawled. It was difficult at first to ascertain the true dimensions of the hole or tunnel or whatever it was, but as I peered around through the half-gloom I discovered at length that the cavern was of immense proportions. The roof curved above me, lost in gloom; the packed-earth walls receded to every side.

Amid the center of the vast cavernous space, flames writhed, fiercely scarlet, from a fire-pit. The hot light smote my eyes painfully, blinding me after long hours spent in absolute darkness. Bemusedly I wondered how the albino savages could endure the glare of open fire, then saw the beastlike men, grunting and shuffling about the cavern floor upon unguessable errands, each shielding his weak eyes from the blaze of the fire-pit with dirty paws.

Klygon lay some little distance beyond me, propped against the earth wall, looking woebegone. His arms were bound together behind him, as were mine, or so I guessed from the dull pain that bit into my numb wrists. Our legs were free, I noticed, not that we could do much with them.

There must have been thirty or forty of the savages scattered about the immensity of the cavern. Some of them, I saw with faint surprise, were women, but women so degraded and brutish as to be every bit as squat and anthropoidal as the males. There were also children—if you could so dignify with the word naked and filthy little brutes like hairless monkeys, which snarled and spat and squabbled noisily.

I saw no other captives like ourselves.

But there were gnawed bones and broken skulls and pelvis bones scattered about through the trampled muck that coated the cavern floor, and most of them were human.

Lying there quite helplessly, my head throbbing from the pummeling I had suffered under the heavy wooden clubs, I wondered dazedly if these brutish creatures had sunk so low on the scale of humanity as to have developed the habits of… cannibals.

Doubtless, I would soon learn that for myself.

We lay there for what must have been hours, Klygon and I, too far apart to indulge in conversation, beyond an eloquent glance or two of mutual commiseration. We were in no way molested; in fact, none of the shambling albinos paid the slightest attention to us, and the only members of the tribe who seemed to notice us at all were the repulsive little—I cannot call them “children”—cubs. And whenever one or two of them thought to approach us, whether from curiosity or a desire to torment the helpless, one or another of the females would cuff it, and it would scrabble away squealing.

As there was nothing else to do, and as no present danger threatened, I fell to sleep again, for the warmth of the fire, the thick, smoky air, and the dirt in which I lay were, all things considered, more comfortable and conducive to slumber than the dank hole wherein I had passed an uneasy night.

I take no credit for my bravery in sleeping under these conditions. During my adventurings upon the World of the Green Star I have evolved a certain, simple philosophy. One of its tenets is that you never know when danger will be thrust upon you and your strength will be taxed to the utmost. Therefore, I have fallen into the habit of snatching a nap whenever possible, for you never know when you will be called upon to battle for your life, and a body that is fresh and rested fights better than one which is tense and exhausted.

My slumber, in this dire captivity, however, must have seemed an example of the most heroic fortitude conceivable. For when I roused, sensing the nearness of another, I read amazement and a reluctant admiration in the face of the person who had approached me.

“Stranger, do you fear death so little, you can sleep in the very lair of cannibals?”

The person who addressed this question to me in surprise and seeming admiration was not one of the hairy, uncouth cave-dwelling savages, but, in his slender, elegant mien, obviously a denizen of one of the treetop cities. He had a broad, intellectual brow, a delicate, fine-boned face, and quick, clever, inquisitive eyes. He was of uncertain age, but, then, as I have heretofore noted, I have always found it next to impossible to ascertain the age of the individual Laonese with any degree of precision.

I grinned at his admiration.

“While I live, I must sleep,” I said. “And I still live. It does not, therefore, require any particular bravery to attend to the needs of nature, even though a captive.”

He smiled and said nothing. It was a singularly beautiful smile, and it illuminated his wasted features. I could not help noticing that his face was lean and deeply lined, whether by the years or by suffering. He was nearly naked, his attire consisting of worn rags patched together, and his body was thin to gauntness, his lean back and shoulders scored by red welts as from a recent whipping. I began to develop considerable curiosity concerning the friendly stranger.

“There are yet other needs of the flesh,” he observed, setting bowls of rudely carved wood before me. “Food and drink, being among them.” The bowls contained fresh water and scraps of meat. As the odor of meat assailed my nostrils, my mouth watered uncontrollably, and I became aware of a powerful appetite.

“This is kindly of you,” I said, “but it is difficult to eat without the use of one’s hands.”

He shrugged tiredly. “Our lord and master, Gor-ya, chief of the cave-people, permits you to be fed but not to be freed. So let me assist you.”

I gratefully accepted the rude meal from his hands, while continuing to study him with curiosity. In delicacy and breeding and elegance of mien, he differed in no way from the pampered princelings of Phaolon or the other highly civilized races of the World of the Green Star. However, his origin was obviously different, for there were certain peculiarities about his person which intrigued me.

For one thing, there was the matter of his hair.

The Laonese who dwell in the jewelbox cities miles aloft in the forks and branches of the titanic trees possess hair as light and silken as thistledown, and generally of shades varying between sparkling pure silver and queer, delightful green-gold, which lends them an aspect uncommonly elfin in appearance. But the sparse growth of hirsute adornment which crowned his high, intelligent brow, although light and silken, was of jet-black, a shade I do not recall having seen before on this planet.

His eyes, too, were glittering beads of jet-quick, alert, shrewd, inquisitive. And his skin—!

The Laonese races I have met during my travels and adventures have skin colorings which range from the tones of old parchment and mellow ivory to sallow Oriental shades of amber. His complexion, however, was a distinct and vivid shade of blue—unless my eyes were mistaken, and his seemingly peculiar coloration was merely a trick of the light, which was brilliant, richly colored—and wavering?

I filed the fact away for later reference; it was not something to inquire about, I thought, for sheer politeness alone made me refrain from questioning him concerning his race.

When he had finished his task and I was fed, I thanked him.

“I am Karn of the Red Dragon,” I said, simply. “It is good to have found one friend, at least, among so many enemies. I assume that you are a captive here, like myself?”

He nodded, with another of those quick, beautiful smiles which lit up his drawn, weary features.

“My name is Delgan,” he said, “Delgan of the Isles, a captive for many years.”

“If the cavefolk are cannibals, as you suggest, I am surprised to learn you have remained in possession of your own skin.”

He laughed, a strange, musical, silvery laugh. “Gor-ya has found my wits of service to him,” he said. “The cave-dwellers have sunk so low in the scale of human society that their intelligence is all but submerged in brutish lusts. For this reason, a man with a quick, clever mind—such as myself—finds employment among them, other than as mere provender for the table.”

I nodded a bit squeamishly at the empty bowl from which I had just been fed.

“May I hope that was the flesh of beasts, not men?”

“It was. Rest easy on that, O Karn! The cave-men partake of the flesh of their enemies, conquered in battle, only after they have fed the God.”

I was about to inquire what he meant by that, but an angry bellow roared across the cavern and Delgan rose nimbly to his feet and hurried to the bidding of his master.

I gazed after the older man, speculatively.

If he had been a prisoner among these brutes for many years, my own chances for making an escape to freedom would seem few.

But at least it seemed I had a friend in Delgan of the Isles …

That night—if night indeed existed in a realm of perpetual gloom such as this—Klygon and I slept huddled in a side cavern with other captives of the cave-dwellers.

These were a sorry lot of pitifully starved and spiritless men and women. Most of them had fallen prey to the albino savages in much the same manner in which the homely little Assassin and I had been made prisoner. Either they were travelers, whose steeds had precipitated them into the Abyss for any one of a variety of reasons, or they were members of the many relatively primitive tribes of nomad hunters who roamed the worldwide forest of giant trees without allegiance to any particular city. The boy hunter, Karn, whose body I now wore, had been one of this hardy breed, I recalled. But from strong, independent nomad warriors, the captives had been starved, beaten, or brutalized into submission, and a more timid and degraded lot I had never encountered. Some of them had been born to parents enslaved by the albino savages, and thus knew no other existence than this miserable way of life. A few, like Delgan, had been captured within recent years.

Delgan himself held a position of some trust and responsibility among his savage masters, for his quick wits and clever tongue had won him their truculent admiration. Thus, he was not billeted with the other captives, but had quarters elsewhere in the greater caverns, where he served the chief of the cave-savages as an overseer of the slaves.

I speculated concerning the mystery of this Delgan of the Isles, as he termed himself. Never yet had I encountered or even heard of a blue-skinned race on the planet of the giant trees, although there were, or had been in former centuries, a nation of strange savage marauders called the “Blue Barbarians,” given to periodic attacks of racial madness, during which they ran amok and destroyed everything in their path. Delgan, however, was an urbane and civilized individual, and certainly no barbarian—and I was not certain that the Blue Barbarians were so-called because of their coloration, anyway.

And what was meant by his appellation “Delgan of the Isles”? What isles? I knew of no islands, nor even of any sea, in all the World of the Green Star, which, for all I had thus far learned in my perils and peregrinations, consisted of a forest of titanic trees which stretched unbroken from pole to pole.

I resolved to inquire of these matters, when I had the next opportunity to converse privately with Delgan. But it did not seem to be a matter of any particular importance, and certainly not one of any pressing urgency.

What was important was that loyal, homely little Klygon and myself were helpless captives in the clutches of a tribe of savages given to unspeakable cruelties, and even to cannibalism.

We were disarmed and helpless; we were also completely lost here in the black Abyss at the bottom of the world, without the slightest chance of escaping to the upper world again.

In such a situation, it would be understandable if black despair did not settle upon us to dampen our spirits.

However, we had one hopeful aspect in our current situation. And that was that, in the mysterious blue-skinned man of unknown race, we had, it seemed a friend and a potential ally.

Yes, it seemed we had a valuable friend in Delgan of the Isles… but, as to his usefulness, only time would tell.

Chapter 12 Condemned to Death

Before long I became adjusted to the rhythm of life here among the savages of the forest floor.

They were a brutish lot, the cave-men. It was Delgan’s opinion that they were the inbred and degenerate descendants of members of the higher Laonese civilizations, who had fled here for refuge from war, invasion, or plague, or who had fallen into the Abyss as had Klygon and I. Over hundreds of generations, it might be, they had been forced, by the crude realities of this harsh life, to abandon the arts of civilization one by one, in order to survive. By now they were little more than beasts, themselves.

Gor-ya, whom I soon met, was an immense, hulking brute with little piggish red eyes and the heavy hand of a bully. He was a virtual giant of a man, for all his bestial anthropoid form. He ruled the cavern-dwellers by simple virtue of superior strength and the possession of cruelties even more fiendish than that of the other males of his tribe.

There were perhaps half a hundred albino savages of Gor-ya’s tribe. They dwelt here in caverns hollowed out beneath the roots of the giant trees for the great relative safety such a haven afforded them against the dire and dreadful predators which roamed and ruled the eternal darkness of the forest’s floor.

Their mode of existence was harsh and uncompromising, and the savages clung to life with a tenacity and an ingenuity which would have been admirable had they not been so despicable and brutish a lot.

The central cavern of the fire-pit was but the largest of the subterranean places hollowed by patient generations beneath the floor of the forest. In one such cavern, only slightly smaller than the one in which I had first awakened, the cavefolk kept their “herds.” These partially domesticated “cattle” were fat white grubs the size of full-grown bulls. I have since thought the yngoum, as the cavefolk called them, resembled the aphids kept by the ants and certain other insects of my home world, but this is merely my opinion.

If there were other tribes of albino savages who dwelt here at the bottom of the world, I never learned. The cavern-dwellers, however, had their enemies here in the subterranean darkness, as I soon discovered. Exactly what these enemies were, I did not at first know. Gor-ya and his chieftains called them the kraan. This is a word which simply means “crawlers,” and was employed by the cavefolk as a term of disrespect and loathing. I did not at first understand the term, but it became increasingly obvious that the tribe shared this cavern-world with unseen foes they hated and feared, for Gor-ya maintained a system of guards night and day over the entrances and exits to those portions of the tunnel-system, and the punishments he visited upon any guard who was discovered derelict in his duties was fearful.

Klygon and I were soon put to work tending the immense, fat, mindless aphids. This was an easy job, as the yngoum were too stupid to do anything else but feed, which they did at all times they were not asleep. The waddling herd of obese, repulsive “cattle” browsed on the crops of mould or fungi or moss which sprouted in the dark, moist environment of the large, lightless cavern. Our duties consisted simply of keeping an eye on them, to see that they should not stray into any of the side tunnels or passageways which led into the unused portions of the cave-system, where they might be seized by the kraan.

Who or what these tireless, unseen enemies of the cave-people were I still had no idea. Whenever Delgan and Klygon and I had a chance to speak together, our conversation was on other matters than the nature of the mysterious and dreaded kraan. For the ugly little Assassin and I, of course, were preoccupied by our desires to escape from this captivity.

“There is no particular problem to making an escape,” Delgan said in reply to our questions. “The entrances to those parts of the tunnel-system unoccupied by Gor-ya’s people lie open and unguarded beyond the cavern where the yngoum feed. You have merely to avoid for a few moments the eyes of the guards set over the yngoum-herders, and slip away into the lightless tunnels beyond. Nothing could be easier…”

Klygon eyed the ascetic elderly man with suspicious eyes.

“Now, lad,” he said querulously to me, ignoring the aloof smile on Delgan’s face, “you can be certain sure ‘tis far more difficult than that. Elsewise your high-and-mighty friend, here, would of done the same himself, many a long and weary year ago!”

Perhaps I should add here that Klygon, for some peculiar reason, had taken an instant dislike to the quiet, aristocratic person of Delgan of the Isles. From the very first he viewed our only friend in the cavern-world with a suspicion and a distrust he did not even bother to hide. I am unable to account for his distaste of the elegant, gentle-spoken, clever older man. Perhaps it was simply a matter of the enormous difference between them, for Delgan, with his weary, lean, aristocratic face, quick bright eyes and sparse ink-black hair framing a high, noble brow, his fastidious manner and clever speech, differed enormously in every way from homely, blunt-spoken Klygon , with his knobby, ugly face, stunted body, and speech which savored of the gutters and back alleys of the thieves’ quarter of Ardha. Two more completely different individuals it would be hard to find across the breadth of the planet.

“As the wise and clever Klygon so correctly suspicions,” Delgan said, “it is indeed more difficult than that. Simply to elude the attentions of the guards is a matter of no particular difficulty, for they are ignorant, lazy brutes. The problem lies in the unexplored tunnels themselves, for which no maps exist. Therein one would quickly become hopelessly lost, to wander for all eternity without finding an egress to the upper world, were it not for the fact that you would die of hunger or thirst or from the attack of predators long before that.”

“Aye, I thought there’d be a catch to it!” sniffed Klygon.

“How can you be so sure no exit to the upper world exists beyond the cavern where the yngoum feed?” I asked.

He shrugged casually. “I don’t know it,” he said indifferently, “I just say that no one knows of one. No, my friends, the only exit to the upper world of which we know for certain is that by which you were carried captive here.” And he nodded toward a large opening in the wall of the cavern across from the fire-pit.

The opening he indicated by his nod was closed with heavy doors of wood and kept under perpetual guard. I had often noticed it, but had not known until now that this was, in fact, the way to the upper world.

“I gather, Delgan, that in your opinion we have little chance of escaping by that means?”

Mischief glittered in his bright black eyes.

“Unless you possess remarkable supernatural powers, O Karn, I believe you will find that exit impenetrable,” he said softly. “For beyond that portal lie the pens wherein the atrocious sluth abide; and the sluth feed upon human flesh, whenever they may do so…”

I tightened my jaw grimly, and, beside me, Klygon shivered with an involuntary grimace. For the sluth were the enormous worm-monsters the cave-savages tamed for riding—if “tamed” be the proper word. We certainly had no chance of fleeing through a cavern thronged by the immense, glistening worms, for they could writhe and wriggle many times faster than a man could run.

Like all of our previous conversations on the theme of escape, this one ended in silence and hopeless frustration.

But there must be a way out of the caverns—and I was determined to find it.

It was Klygon’s misfortune, a little while after this, to have been on watch during one of the infrequent invasions of the kraan. The mysterious enemies feared by the cave-savages did not very often make an incursion into the chambers of the degenerate albinos, but when they did it marked the termination of our captivity, in a sense.

As I have remarked earlier in this narrative, the fat white grubs the cave-dwellers herded like cattle required little or no guarding. A day or two after our conversation with Delgan, Klygon was set to watch over the herds while I was assigned the task of tending the fire-pit. My first intimation of the attack came when Klygon, white-faced with terror, burst suddenly into the central cavern, squalling fearfully.

Behind him came a fantastic, clattering horde of chitin-clad monster-ants!

They were the size of elephants, these ants, their dark red armor gleaming with an oily sheen, their gaunt, bristling legs propelling them into the cavern with remarkable speed. There were scores of them, and many crunched in their sharp-toothed mandibles the remnants of the juicy yngoum they had pounced upon in the far cavern. Glittering compound eyes sparkling with cold intelligence, the clattering horde poured into the central cavern, snatching up howling albino savages and ripping them asunder. They moved like lightning and were upon the tribe in a second.

Roaring, some of the savages seized up rude flint-bladed spears and hurled them against the foremost of the attackers, but to little avail. The crablike armor of the kraan were proof to the blades, and, in mere moments the gigantic ants had swarmed over the defenders, slaying most of them.

And then, as suddenly as they had come upon us, the horde of giant ants vanished back into the farther caverns from which they had come. I later learned that, while they possessed a cold, emotionless intelligence perhaps equal to that of the degenerate savages, they were totally unpredictable. They could have invested the cavern in another few moments, and would probably have slain the tribe down to its last member. But some inexplicable message flashed among the scuttling, many-legged monsters, and as if by some prearranged signal, they turned and poured back into the cavern in a chittering horde, and were gone, leaving the herds devastated and perhaps a dozen of the tribe slaughtered.

Klygon fell sobbing at my feet.

“I but nodded off, lad!” he blubbered. “Forty winks is all—and the giant red creatures were upon me, and I ran!”

“You fool, you were supposed to sound the alarm!” Delgan hissed. For once, his urbane elegance had vanished, and his face was a pale, twitching mask of feral rage.

“I know—I know!” Klygon blubbered.

Then a huge dirty hand snatched him to his feet, shook him as a terrier worries a rat, and flung him facedown in the muck of the cavern floor. It was Gor-ya, wild-eyed with rage. Spitting with fury, he began to vent his rage on my small, hapless friend. In one hand the savage chief held a long barbed whip; in the other he clutched my wriggling comrade. The whip rose and fell, whistling through the air. Blood spurted from the flesh of the squealing, kicking little Assassin, and I suddenly understood where Delgan had got those raw, half-healed welts that crisscrossed his back and shoulders.

I lost my head.

I could not endure to watch idly, without intervention, while the brutal Gor-ya whipped Klygon to a pulp.

The cave-man was head and shoulders taller than I, and twice as heavy. His broad, sloping shoulders and long, dangling, apelike arms lent him tremendous strength. I could hardly hope to engage him in battle without a sword or spear or some manner of weapon.

And then the great fire that roared in the shallow pit caught my eye.

Swift as thought, and without conscious volition, I stooped and snatched up a brand from the fire, and sprang upon the growling bully whose whip rose and fell, scattering droplets of blood on the smoky air.

I thrust the flaming brand at his bowed legs, singeing his flesh.

Gor-ya lurched back from the huddled, hapless figure of Klygon, bellowing with surprise and pain.

His little red eyes, bright with rage and blood-lust, peered about, sighting me there with the blazing brand clenched in my hand. With a roar of outraged fury he swung the whip up and brought it hissing upon my breast. Pain licked through my flesh like a tongue of fire.

The logical thing to do would have been to spring backward to avoid the stinging kiss of Gor-ya’s whip. But behind me lay the shallow pit filled with leaping flames.

So I sprang forward, into the reach of his terrible arms.

Dropping the whip, he lunged for me with grasping paws.

If once those calloused paws closed on me, the unequal battle would be over. A half-grown boy, I could not hope to fight the hulking savage on his own terms, hand to hand. Once those hands clamped down on my arms, Gor-ya would maul and maim me, and in his present savage temper, he would either kill me or cripple me with his bare hands.

So I did the only thing there was for me to do—and thrust the burning torch directly into his face.

The matted tangle of his filthy hair caught fire and flared up with a crackling sound and a stench of burning flesh.

Shrieking like a gelded bull, Gor-ya staggered back, beating at his burning mane with scorched and blistering hands. Then he fell wallowing in the muck of the cavern floor, frantically daubing himself with reeking mud to extinguish the flames.

I knelt, dragged the blubbering form of Klygon to his feet, and thrust the whimpering little Assassin into a stumbling, staggering run, fiercely bidding him to get out of the vicinity while he could.

I would have fled myself, hoping to elude the vengeance of Gor-ya in the far tunnels, but I had reckoned without the hulking tribesmen who flocked to the scene. One clouted me from behind with a stone ax or club—I know not which—and the blow sent me to my knees.

Groggy from the smashing impact, I sprawled limply and in the next instant hairy, unwashed bodies fell upon me, pinning me helpless in the grip of many powerful arms, nearly crushing the breath out of me. The torch was torn from my grasp.

A moment later they wrestled me to my feet and I blinked blearily into the enraged features of Gor-ya.

In truth, he was a ghastly sight, his ugly, heavy-browed face a mass of raw burns and blisters, half his shaggy mane burned away, his venomous little eyes mad with killing fury. My heart sank within me then, and I consigned my spirit to the gods, for the face of Gor-ya was murderous and I was helpless and in his power. A quick, brutal death was what I hoped for.

Panting heavily, clenching and unclenching his blistered paws, the shaggy ogrelike chieftain lurched toward me. I had mere moments of life left, and I knew it.

Then—to my complete surprise—a slim, elegant figure interposed itself between the raging albino and myself.

It was Delgan.

“No manner of death can be deemed fitting for such a crime, great chief,” he declared in a clear, ringing voice, “but one!”

Growling an oath, Gor-ya raised one burly arm to deal him a buffet. But something in the smaller man’s poise and demeanor made him check the blow.

“What death, cringing worm?” Gor-ya demanded. Delgan bowed obsequiously, shooting me a nasty, smirking smile. When he spoke, his oily tones oozed servility, and had in them a vile music of sadistic gloating that surprised me. Had I been wrong about the strange blue man with the clever, glittering eyes? And had Klygon been right all this time, in his suspicions of Delgan’s trustworthiness?

“It has been a long time since last we fed… the God,” Delgan whispered suggestively.

An evil little light gleamed in the piggish eyes of Gor-ya. He licked his blistered lips… and my heart sank within me. It was not going to be a quick death, after all.

“He lifted his hand against the mighty chief Gor-ya,” hissed Delgan cunningly. “Is it not time the God… fed?”

A cruel gloating expression came into the face of the savage who stood there, breathing heavily, eyes glaring at me with hideous malevolence. He grinned hungrily, revealing the rotting stubs of broken, discolored teeth.

“Yah!” he grunted. “We feed him to the God—now!”

He lifted one arm, gesturing. Arms tightened about me to drag me away. But Delgan crept closer to the huge form of his master.

“Tomorrow,” he whispered. “Give him all night to sweat in fear.”

That tickled the cruel fancies of Gor-ya. He threw back his ugly head and laughed harshly.

“Yah! Take him away! Tomorrow… the God eats!”

They dragged me off to a dark pit and I caught a glimpse of Klygon’s face, white and wet and distorted with horror, where he lingered on the edge of the crowd.

Then they thrust me over the edge and I fell into the pit, to await the morning. And the last thing I saw as they left me to the cold wet darkness and the misery of my own thoughts was the face of Delgan, peering down over the edge of the pit… the cold, mocking face of Delgan, creased in a leering smile… Delgan, whom I had thought my friend.