Mad Empress of Callisto

Chapter 1 On the Great Plains

Man’s inability to foresee future events is one of Nature’s kindest gifts.

Had I but known what would come about from that day’s idle hunting expedition; no power in the world could have forced me to stir from the city of my beloved mate.

But a month of festivities and celebrations had begun to pall on one who was more accustomed to peril and adventure than to interminable laudatory speechmaking and the laying of cornerstones. And besides, the vanth were migrating.

Once each year this species of game traverses the Great Plains of Haratha to their mating grounds in the valleys of the Black Mountains. You might describe the vanth as stag or elk, for they are the closest you can come in terrene equivalents. A large quadruped, hunted for its succulent meat, which is greatly favored by the Shondakorians; a beast, however, not befurred but covered with a slick, supple hide like that of the seal or the dolphin; but a beast whose brow bears up a branching staglike crown of antlers nonetheless.

At any other season of the Thanatorian year, the vanth are elusive and fleet-footed game, difficult to catch and hopeless quarry to chase if you happen to be mounted on the restive and unruly thaptors the inhabitants of the jungle Moon employ in lieu of horses. The thaptor is a large, feathered but wingless avian vaguely like a cross between the ostrich and the legendary gryphon, and, like the ostrich, capable of attaining remarkable speed. But its gallop, if I may employ the word, consists of spurts of brief duration, while the mighty vanth can run all day without tiring.

During the short migratory season, however, the vanth traverse the Great Plains in gigantic herds, their single purpose consisting of the mating urge. The presence of mounted huntsmen, which at any other season would disperse them in rapid flight in all directions, they ignore at this season, intent only on reaching their mating grounds in the distant mountains.

Thus, with dawn, a gaily caparisoned hunting party rode forth from the great gates of the Golden City of Shondakor to hunt the vanth. And thus a sequence of events was set into motion which was to forever alter the destiny of a mighty empire and to reshape the future history of many nations.

I, Jandar of Callisto, soldier of fortune from the distant planet Earth, and my beloved Princess, Darloona of Shondakor, rode in the forefront of this expedition. Scarce a month before―as we Earthlings measure the passage of time―had we been wed, upon the success of my mission to rescue the Princess of the Ku Thad from her captivity and to destroy for all time that race of cruel and despotic warriors, the Sky Pirates of Zanadar. After innumerable adventures on the mysterious planet of Thanator, or Callisto, fifth moon of distant Jupiter, I had won a double victory: the conquest of Zanadar, the City in the Clouds; and the conquest of the heart of the most beautiful and desirable woman of two worlds.

Despite the alienage of my birth and despite my lack of noble or aristocratic lineage, I wed the woman I loved with the wholehearted consent of her people and of the peers of her realm. And today I reigned beside her as Prince of the Golden City. Such are the traditions of the Ku Thad race: the custom of a prince-consort is unknown to them.

We were very happy, she and I.

On that fateful morning, as we rode from Shondakor to hunt the mighty vanth across the Great Plains, we were accompanied by a party of our dearest friends and most loyal courtiers. Among these was the handsome and dashing Prince Valkar, with whom I had formed a firm friendship while we had both served incognito among that bandit-horde called the Chac Yuul, now long since dispersed and broken. With us as well rode gallant and chivalrous Lukor of Ganatol, that master swordsman who had taught me the ancient and noble science of the blade.

As well, there rode in our company the tall, gaunt, and solemn-eyed Koja of the Yathoon Horde, an alien insectoid creature, who had been my first friend on all of Thanator and into whose cold and passionless heart I had instilled the precepts of friendship. The ugly and doggedly devoted Ergon, a former slave of the Perushtarians, and the somber but valiant and heroic Zantor, who had been a great captain among the Corsairs of the Clouds, rode with us as well. And in our train thundered a half-company of the guardsmen of Shondakor, armed against any unlikely danger.

Oh, we were a gay and laughing band, as we rode forth from the Golden City that bright and brilliant morn!

How soon … how very soon … our gaiety was to darken with black tragedy and our laughter turn to grim sorrow … and again I say, we mortals are fortunate that the future remains clouded and unknown, so that we may enjoy each moment to the full, happily ignorant of what is soon to come.

It was Darloona who first sighted the white vanth. Her glorious eyes flashed with excitement, her lithe body stretched in the saddle as she spurred her capricious thaptor into full gallop. Off she sped, the long grasses sighing in her wake, one slim arm holding poised and ready the slender javelin.

Only a half-instant later I flew after her, jolting my steed into the charge, following the floating banner of her gorgeous scarlet mane. Ere long I had caught up to her and we rode together, side by side, in pursuit of the vanth.

A white vanth is exceedingly rare and the huntsmen of Callisto consider such a beast a great prize. And our vanth was indeed white as the new-fallen snow―a superb brute, fully grown, bearing up its proud crown of antlers like the unchallenged monarch of the wilderness he was.

On ahead of us he fled in great gliding bounds, flying like the wind. We urged our thaptors to an even swifter stride, lest the beast escape us by reason of its untiring and superior speed. In no time we had left the rest of our party far behind, with the sole exception of the determined Ergon. His squat, muscular figure bent over the saddlebow, his scarlet face dark with exertion, bald pate gleaming with perspiration, the Perushtarian flung himself after us before any of the others could follow.

I turned laughing back at him, aflame with the speed of the chase and the excitement of it all, and he twisted his ugly, square-jawed face from its customarily sour expression into a gleeful, froglike grin. Immensely strong he was broad-shouldered, deep-chested Ergon, for all his diminutive height and bowed legs. We had been slaves together in the Perushtarian city of Narouk, and had fought side-by-side among the gladiators of Zanadar, and the ugly, loyal little man was the most faithful of friends.

On and on ahead of us the white vanth bounded, gliding with an almost magical swiftness through the long, sere grasses of the Great Plains of Haratha. Ere long my thaptor faltered, gasping for breath through its gaping parrot beak, savage orange eyes rolling wildly. I strove to urge it on, employing the small wooden club called an olo which is hung at the saddlebow for precisely that purpose; but it was no good, for my steed was winded and its charge slowed, as did the four-legged bird-horses ridden by Ergon and my beloved. We would lose the vanth, we knew, and must return to accept the laughing mockery of our fellow hunters with chagrin.

But―no!―for even as our mounts slowed, the vanth itself faltered in its flight, and, although it maintained a considerable lead on us, the beast no longer flew before us with the wings of the wind. Perchance it had strained a tendon in its headlong and precipitous flight, for I could see that it limped, gingerly putting its weight on one foreleg.

At any rate, from whatever cause, we still had a chance of coming within javelin-reach of the white vanth; so, instead of turning about to rejoin our comrades, now far behind us on the plain, we pressed on in hot pursuit of the limping vanth at diminished speed. And played into the hands of Destiny in so doing … .

The Great Plains of Haratha are aptly named. From the inland sea of Sanmur Laj in the remote west to the Black Mountains of the far east, they dominate the southern half of this jungle Moon from the trackless jungles of the Grand Kumala on the equator to the austral pole itself―at least on the one hemisphere of Thanator known to me and to my companions; for the other side of this world, as I have elsewhere stated, yet remains an unexplored and impenetrable region of mystery.

For many hundreds of korads, then, the plains stretch, league after league of desolate prairie whose long grasses sigh and whisper beneath the winds. But by no means are the Great Plains of Haratha unbroken flatlands, for here and there, like miniature islands amidst an ocean, small clumps of trees break the monotony of the prairie. Generally, these are jaruka trees, which, with their gnarled and knotted black trunks and branches and thick growth of uncanny scarlet foliage, are the most common arboreal flora of the jungle Moon.

Towards one such stand of trees, our limping quarry now directed his faltering flight, hoping, quite obviously, to evade his hunters amidst the heavily overgrown copse.

As we neared the clump of trees in turn, we could not help but notice that even as our snow-white quarry was himself an unusual rarity among his kind, so were the trees among which he sought safe refuge.

That is to say, while the common jaruka tree has a black trunk and scarlet foliage, the copse ahead of us seemed to be made up of an equally unusual arboreal rarity, the sorad tree, which reverses the normal coloration, and boasts jet-black leafage with trunk and branches of curious scarlet wood. This copse in particular, I noted without thinking anything of it at the time, was also unusual in the extreme height of the sorad trees whereof it was composed. Commonly, it is yet a third species, the borath tree, which attains the greater heights; yet these sorads, their massive girth denoting hoary centuries of growth, soared to a stately height such as I have never before seen upon Thanator.

Unerringly did the limping vanth make for the safe refuge of this tall stand of sorad trees.

Unfalteringly did we direct our winded thaptors on its track.

We entered the grove virtually on the heels of the staggering vanth, but the underbrush was so thickly grown that neither Ergon nor Darloona nor I could freely cast our light javelins in an attempt to bring it down.

A narrow glade cut into the heart of the copse. Down its length the white vanth fled―but it was brought up short at the end of this glade, for here a solid wall of century―old sorads rose like a great palisade.

We sprang from our thaptors and advanced on foot as the white vanth turned at bay to face its hunters.

Darloona’s glorious emerald eyes flashed with the excitement of the chase. Her superb bosom rose and fell, pantingly, as she breathed. Poised like a dancing―girl, my Princess confronted the vanth with lifted javelin. Against the gloom of the thick woods, the mighty beast glimmered ghostly white.

And then, like the phantom it so resembled, it vanished!

And in its place stood a small, dwarfed figure, swathed in heavy robes of neutral gray.

A strange little man, placid and plump-faced and smiling, with a butter-yellow skin, a bald head, and cold, slitted eyes of gelid ink-black venom.

Darloona gasped at this astounding apparition. Only a moment before the magnificent white vanth had turned at bay, menacing us with its crown of antlers.

Now it had melted into this air … and, in its place, a dwarfed figure in gray, smiling and enigmatic.

Magic! Or―dream?

Frozen with astonishment, I stood rooted to my tracks, staring at the yellow dwarf.

By my side, burly-chested Ergon glowered, one calloused paw gripping the heft of the great bronze war axe that seldom was far from his side.

“Where did yonder fellow spring from, Jandar?” he growled.

I shrugged. “As well ask, whither vanished the great white vanth we followed,” I said.

“What vanth is that?” He grunted, curiously.

I stared at him, wondering if I had heard correctly.

“The great white vanth that fled before us across the plains,” I said, wondering if we were both mad.

He looked at me in astonishment.

“I saw no vanth,” he said puzzledly, “white or otherwise !”

Darloona and I exchanged a stare of amazement.

“But―I” I started to protest. But my protest was never concluded.

Because just then the weighted nets fell upon us from the branches overhead.

Chapter 2 Kidnaped in the Clouds

It was all done so swiftly that it was over within seconds. A mind of consummate cunning, quite obviously, had spun the web which now entrapped us. But it was accomplished with such bewildering swiftness, that, at the time, I was too busy striving to cope with the mere succession of events to think much about it.

The nets were weighted with heavy stones and bore us to the ground. We sprawled, entangled in the meshes, and before either Ergon or I could free ourselves sufficiently to draw the hunting knives we wore scabbarded at our girdles, a horde of red-skinned men fell upon us from the branches above. They had the scarlet skin of Perushtarians, but their heads were covered with long black hair which they wore woven into a single thick queue down the back of the neck, like Chinamen.

This meant that, whatever they were, they were not Perushtarians, or, at least, not Perushtarians of pure-blooded descent. For the red men of the merchant empire were bald as so many eggs.

At the time, of course, I was too busy struggling against the many hands which clutched at me to worry about modes of hirsute adornment. This struggle, of course, was futile: tangled in the web as I was, I could not free my hands in order to cut my way free or use the sword I wore at my shoulder-baldric. Neither could Ergon, for all his burly strength. Our adversaries were too many in sheer weight of number, and had planned and doubtlessly rehearsed their attack in such wise as to render us helpless and securely trussed in half a minute.

We were disarmed, our wrists securely bound behind our backs with rawhide thongs, gags thrust into our mouths, and it was all accomplished with dazzling speed of execution. Then the squat red men with the thick black queues of plaited hair cut us free of the nets and dragged us to our feet, propelling us across the clearing and into the depths of the woods.

And all this while the yellow dwarf stood watching, a cold gloating smile crinkling his cold black slitted eyes.

In a detached manner, I could not help feeling an abstract sort of admiration for the speed and timing and efficiency with which our capture was accomplished. We were not handled with any particular brutality; neither were any indignities used against my Princess, although she was furious and raging, as was I. At the time, I did not feel any singular fear. Our captors had immobilized and disarmed us with great skill and cunning, but I remained calm and unworried, although I desired nothing more than to be free of my bonds and to get a sword into my hands.

The dispassion wherewith I viewed our present plight may easily be explained. I viewed our predicament, you see, as a temporary one. Not ten minutes behind us rode our true and loyal friends, Luker, Valkar, and Zantor. The master swordsman of Ganatol, the heroic son of Lord Yarrak, and the mightiest champion of the gladiators of Zanadar would be upon the scene in minutes at the most, and against their blades the squat, red-skinned ambushers would be helpless, for all their number. And at the heels of our friends rode a half-company of armed Shondakorian guardsmen.

No―thought I, detachedly―we had nothing to fear. Our position, although humiliating and uncomfortable, was temporary at most. Rescue, freedom, and vengeance rode towards us through the grassy plains with the speed of the wind.

Or so I thought at the time.

Our captors hurried us along through the thick underbrush and then thrust us into the most peculiar contraption.

It was like nothing more than an immense wicker basket woven of tough river reeds and stiffened with ribs of a light, fibrous, hollow, and tubular wood that resembled bamboo in all respects save that of coloration.

This basket was large enough to hold fifteen persons, as was shortly proved. For the dozen or so men who had seized us, together with the yellow, slant-eyed dwarf in neutral gray, and a young woman of aristocratic and even imperious bearing and hauteur joined us within the inexplicable enclosure.

I had naturally expected to be bundled into the saddle of a thaptor, for how else could our kidnappers hope to bear us away from swift and certain rescue? But the immense basket sat on the thickly grassed ground. It proved not even to be a wickerwork chariot as I had thought it to be at first glance. No, the huge light thing of woven reeds was hung from the branches above, for long woven cables or ropes went up from the rim of the basket into the leafy gloom above our heads.

What in the world did our captors hope to accomplish by this inexplicable act? I exchanged a wide-eyed glance and eloquent shrug with Ergon and Darloona. Were we in the hands of a pack of raving madmen? Did they hope to hide thus from the gaze of our rescuers? That was absurd and ludicrous: Valkar and the others would comb every square inch of this stand of trees until they found us.

As yet not one of our captors had so much as uttered a single word.

Now the imperious young woman who had joined us in the basket delivered a command in a sharp, clear voice.

“Cut us free, Zapur!”

One of the warriors plucked a hooked knife from his girdle, leaned from the basket, and began to saw at yet another rope. This rope was tied about the lower trunk of the nearer of the sorad trees. Simultaneously, another warrior leaned out from the other side of the basket and began cutting through a second rope, secured about another sorad trunk on the other side.

Surely, our captors were deranged! Their actions simply made no sense. And yet, with what cunning and sense of timing the red men had planned and carried out their plot! A cold little wind of intuition blew against the back of my neck.

A moment later, my intuition proved valid.

Our captors were not insane. Indeed, they knew exactly what they were doing.

For me jerked loose from the ground and swung up into the air!

Ergon and Darloona were struck wide-eyed with amazement. What was happening seemed to them inexplicable and utterly astonishing. I, too, was astonished; but I alone understood what was happening … and my former confidence at the certainty of a swift and easy rescue emptied from me on the moment, to be replaced by a growing fear …

For, while I had thought the only aerial transport known to the denizens of Callisto to be the flying ships of the Zanadarian pirates, this type of lighter-than-air craft had been used on my native Earth for generations before I had been born.

In short―we were riding in a balloon!

The capacious wickerwork basket was suspended by woven cables from a huge air tight gasbag filled, I suppose, either with heated air or with some gas akin to hydrogen or helium. The balloon itself was of some shiny woven material like oiled silk or wax-impregnated linen. Painted black, it had been invisible to us in the darkness of the copse, hidden among the black foliage of the sorad trees. Once cut loose, it swung aloft in instants. Now we cleared the topmost branches of the tall trees and floated free on the winds of the upper air.

The clump of trees dwindled beneath us. At the very edge of the copse I saw some of our would-be rescuers riding into the woods. Of course, it never occurred to any of our friends to look up and to search for us in the clouds!

I understood now why we had been so tightly and thoroughly gagged. And, remembering my former aloof amusement at our pointless captivity, and my bland assumption that rescue and vengeance lay only minutes away, I felt the sickening impact of worry, as the grim realization of how desperate our situation actually was came home to me.

But there was nothing I could do about it … at least for the present.

The young woman was laughing in delight and excitement at the success of the coup. Triumph flashed in her eyes as she exchanged a few words with the yellow dwarf, then glanced over at me with amusement. I eyed her grimly, inwardly furious.

She was a curious figure, I realized. Young and very beautiful, with the red skin of a Perushtarian. But, like the others, she was no Perushtarian, for the long silken banner of her glistening black hair floated on the winds about us. She wore an odd gown in a style unfamiliar to me, a light garment of silken stuff, tightly stretched across her breasts and fastened with a jeweled brooch over one shoulder, leaving the other shoulder and arm bare. She was, quite evidently, a woman of considerable wealth and importance, for expensive gems flashed at throat and ear,. rings of precious metal adorned her slender hands, and a coronet of odd design encircled her brows, flashing with precious stones.

But I had not the slightest notion of who she was. To the very best of my memory, I had never laid eyes on her before in all my life, and I had no idea of why she had kidnapped us.

It was very obvious that the young woman was in command of this situation. The stolid-faced, bowlegged red warriors deferred to her with every token of awe and subservience. Even the little yellow dwarf with the slitted black gaze seemed in her service. She stood, tall, lithe, and laughing, one jeweled hand clinging to the guide ropes of the balloon, imperious and triumphant as a queen.

But queen of what―and where?

Few and widely-separated are the cities of Thanator the Jungle Moon. Several of the civilizations that share this world between them are wandering and homeless nomad peoples, like the insectoids of the Yathoon Horde or the bandits of the now-disbanded Chac Yuul legion. Our only enemies, the Sky Pirates of Zanadar, we had but recently destroyed, laying their city in ruins. And they dwell in the White Mountains, far away to the northwest. The red empire of the Perushtarians is situated many korads to the northeast of Shondakor; and the four Perushtarian cities of Farz, Narouk, Soraba, and imperial Perusht itself, are widely scattered about the shores of the landlocked sea of Corund Laj. The nearest of the seven cities of Thanator to golden Shondakor is the city of Tharkol, which stands amidst the equatorial plains in the eastern extremity of the hemisphere.

With none of these seven cities is Shondakor currently at enmity, much less at war. With the exception of the Perushtarian merchant empire, the cities of Callisto are lone and individual sovereignties. Our relations with the city-states of Ganatol or Tharkol, for instance, are few; we exchange no ambassadors and we indulge in no trade or commerce. Both cities are vastly inferior to golden Shondakor in size, wealth, or power. For either metropolis to contemplate war with the Golden City of the Ku Thad would be absurd. They would have nothing to gain and everything to lose, for, having but recently broken the power of the Chac Yuul bandit legion, and having for all time exterminated the aerial corsairs of distant Zanadar, we have in recent months emerged as the most powerful nation on this planet.

Only the red empire of the Perushtarians are more numerous than the Ku Thad in terms of populace, and more wealthy. But the red men of Perushtar are the least warlike of all the nations of Thanator. They are a nation of tradesmen, a mercantile civilization like that of the ancient Carthaginians in the remote history of my own world.

For them to challenge the might of victorious Shondakor would be folly and madness. They do not even maintain a standing army, and during the long recent decades during which their trading caravans and merchant fleets were preyed upon by the flying corsairs of Zanadar, they grudgingly paid an annual tribute to assure their immunity from the depredations of the Sky Pirates, rather than raise an army of war.

Bound and gagged and helpless to discuss the situation with my Princess or Ergon, I could only lie, seething with silent rage, while these questions boiled through my turbulent thoughts.

By this time we had ascended to the height of at least half a mile into the air, and were drifting due east on the prevailing winds. Or so I guessed, anyway. It is somewhat difficult to judge one’s direction on Callisto. The inhabitants of the jungle Moon have yet to invent the compass, and as this world is illuminated by a layer of luminous golden vapor in its atmosphere, one never sees the sun and thus cannot with ease or surety judge east from west, which is the easiest thing to do on my own native Earth. But judging the direction of our flight as best I could, we were flying east … east, towards the unknown edge of the world itself, for, as I have said, the far side of Callisto is a realm of unexplored mystery to the natives of this planet. Nothing at all is known of the other hemisphere, save that somewhere therein resides a mysterious people called the Mind Wizards of Kuur, with whom I have already had one encounter.

As related in an earlier volume of these memoirs*, while serving incognito among the warriors of the

Chac Yuul, I discovered that one of the advisors of Arkola, chief of the Black Legion, was a Kuurian named Ool the Uncanny. A little plump, placid Buddha of a man, bald, with slitted eyes and butter-yellow skin, the clever and cunning little priest had been none other than the power behind the throne, so to speak. A shudder ran through me at the memory of that uncanny battle in the Pits, when I had crossed swords with the cunning Ool, in a desperate, last-minute attempt to rescue my beloved Princess from a forced marriage with Prince Vaspian, the son of Arkola the Usurper. Although I am in my own right a master swordsman, Ool proved almost my match, for the little Kuurian possessed the weird power of mental telepathy and thus could read my mind and know my every thought. It is, as I discovered during that desperate duel in the dungeons, almost impossible to conquer a swordsman who can read your mind …

Suddenly I stiffened where I lay, helplessly bound in the basket o f the drifting balloon!

Ool had been a little man, almost a dwarf, yellow-skinned and bald, with slanted eyes, gowned in a priestlike robe of gray …

My gaze flashed across the crowded basket to where the yellow dwarf squatted. His clever and beady black eyes bored into mine, almost knowingly. Almost as if he knew or guessed the direction of my thoughts, a cold and crafty smile hovered about his thin lips―and he nodded.

I tore my gaze from his slanted eyes, and lay stunned in realization.

One of the many mysteries that surrounded our capture was now solved.

For the malignant, gloating little dwarf, with butter-yellow skin was a Mind Wizard of distant and unknown Kuur.

Chapter 3 Prisoners of Tharkol

All the remainder of that long day we flew on, riding the winds far above the Great Plains, on and on into the remote east.

Our captors loosened our bonds, restoring circulation, and made us comfortable enough. They did not, however, remove the gags from our mouths for some reason. We suffered considerably from thirst, therefore.

Time and again I surreptitiously tested my strength against the rawhide thongs that bound my arms behind my back. Had I been bound with ropes, it is just possible that I might have been able to burst free of them, for, raised under the slightly heavier gravitational influence of Earth, my strength is somewhat greater than that of the average Thanatorian. But rawhide is a devilishly difficult thing to free oneself of, for as the untanned leather dries it also shrinks, and, being flexible to a degree, it “gives” ever so slightly to your efforts to free yourself, instead of breaking.

Thus my attempts were in vain; but still I strove to loosen my hands. There was nothing else to be done, and it is not the way of Jandar of Callisto to yield supinely to captivity or to superior force. Far rather would I go down fighting with the last ounce of strength in my body, than to lie helpless without trying, however hopelessly, to win freedom.

Ergon, too, strove to win free of the thongs. The burly, sullen-faced warrior was gagged as were I and Darloona, but his scowling glare was eloquent. Had his mouth been ungagged, he would have made the air sulphurous with ‘oaths. From time to time, I saw his scarlet face congested with effort and the great thews that bulged in shoulder and upper arm tense and stand out in sharp relief like steel bands. But his strength, like my own, was insufficient to break free of bondage.

We were still riding the winds when night fell across the world. Nightfall on Callisto comes without warning and the transition from full daylight to ebon gloom takes only minutes. Thus, when the world darkened suddenly around us and the great moons rose, rich with their many colors, we realized we had been in flight for several hours.

Our flight ended shortly after the coming of the darkness. By the green and red and silvery illumination afforded by three of the many moons of Jupiter, we observed a city on the horizon. It rose from a hilly height amidst the plain and was nowhere near the sea, and therefore we assumed that it was none other than Tharkol.

We could not see very much of it because of our position in the basket, but from what we could observe, it was a large city of stone masonry, ringed about with the mighty bastions of a great wall. From a citadel―crowned and heavily fortified hill in the center of the city, broad paved avenues ran in every direction like spokes from the hub of a wheel. Towards this central citadel the queenly young woman guided our aerial vehicle.

The walls of the citadel drifted past below us. By the green rays of Orovad, or lo, which was then at the zenith, we saw beneath us a broad plaza or forum paved with smooth stone. Over this square, which was the courtyard of the citadel, our captress piloted the balloon.

A second ring of fortifications passed beneath us, and then, as the crimson rays of Ganymede added their illumination to the light of the first moon, we saw that the citadel which crowned the hilly height was built like an enormous ziggurat with many tiers.

Towards the third of these tiers we floated, descending as lightly as a floating leaf. Ranks of guardsmen stood stiffly at attention, the green and red moonlight sparkling from rows of helmets, breastplates, and spear blades. At a curt command they sprang forward, caught the drifting lines and hauled the basket down, tethering it securely to a lengthy mast or spar that struck out at an angle from the lip of the tier and which had obviously been designed for exactly this purpose.

It was the young woman who was the first to step from the basket. As she appeared to their view, the moonlight flashing on the jewels of her coronet, the ranked guards struck their mailed gauntlets to their armored breasts in a crashing salute, and thundered forth a great cry as if from a single throat.

“Hail, Zamara!”

So, at least, we had learned the name of our captress.

The guards bundled us out of the basket and lifted us down to the stone surface of the ziggurat tier, and again I could not help noticing that we were handled without roughness or insult. Zamara turned, made an imperious gesture, flashing in my direction one last triumphant, joyous glance of mockery and amusement from her brilliant eyes. Then we were bundled swiftly away, through a doorway whose lintel was carved with beaked and leering mythological monsters, and through a bewildering maze of corridors and passages into the citadel itself.

And thus ended our flight across the Great Plains of Haratha. If captivity must be our lot, at least ours was luxurious. I had expected to be thrust into the Pits, to be bedded on verminous and moldy straw in some lightless and fetid dungeon cell.

Instead, we were imprisoned in one of the upper levels of the citadel in surroundings of silken and voluptuous comfort. Our “prison cell” was a spacious and airy apartment, stone walls draped with splendid tapestries, nests of velvet cushions arranged between low couches covered with rare furs. Few palaces, in my experience, can boast a more luxurious and beautifully appointed suite for their guests!

Herein, at long last, we were unbound and ungagged. Both Ergon and I had been on the alert for the moment, and when it came we fully intended to hurl ourselves on our captors in a desperate bid for freedom. But in this detail, too, the clever and cunning brain that lay behind the plot had already envisioned and forestalled such an attempt on our part. For as we were untied, alert and vigilant guards stood about us, many blades held unwaveringly at our breasts, quite effectively holding us at bay.

Once we were free, and stood glowering at the guards, helpless to attack, chafing our numb wrists, the guards backed slowly through the portal and left us to our own devices. The door, of course, was a thick and massive slab of the hardest of woods, bound with bronze studs, and securely locked and barred from without.

“It seems we are not to be starved, at any rate,” Ergon grunted sourly. I followed his gesture, to see low taborets of inlaid wood laden with platters of cold sliced meat, fresh fruit, cubes of delicious cheese, and crystal pitchers of golden wine.

Having been gagged for many hours, it was our thirst which chiefly tormented us. The wine was deliciously cold, of exquisite bouquet and superb vintage. Once our raging thirst had been assuaged, we became aware of a ravenous hunger within, and fell to the other viands with a will. The meats were tender and delicately spiced, and the fruits and pastries were richly satisfying.

“How odd of our enemies to imprison us in surroundings of such luxury,” Darloona murmured, glancing about at the gorgeous furnishings. My heart swelled within me at the calm insouciance of her tones. Few of her sex could have endured attack, capture, and imprisonment without giving way to an hysteria of terror or a storm of tears. But the brave and gallant Princess of the Ku Thad shrugged off the indignity of capture and the dread of the unknown fate reserved for us with the unshaken courage I could only admire.

For the ten-thousandth time I pondered the miracle of fate that had won me the love of so magnificent a woman!

“Perushtarians,” I commented around a mouthful of fruit, “have a natural love of luxury which extends, it would seem, even to the decor of their prisons.”

It was a feeble jest, God knows, but she laughed wholeheartedly.

“No Perushtarians these,” grunted Ergon glumly. “You must have noticed their braided hair, Jandar.”

I nodded. “But they have the scarlet skins . . :’

“I am a full-blooded Perushtarian,” he pointed out grimly, “and it is known that something in our blood inclines us to baldness. There is doubtless a strain of Perushtarian lineage in these dogs, but another race is blended therein as well. Noticed you their bandy legs and lankness of hair? What think you, then?”

Darloona set down her wine goblet with a decisive click.

“The Black Legion!” she said.

He nodded glumly. “Aye, Lady! And I know of but one people in whose blood is blended that of the Chac Yuul and of the Empire as well. The city of Tharkol!”

I rubbed my jaw thoughtfully. “I had assumed as much myself, Ergon, having noted the general direction of our flight as best I could from the bottom of that accursed basket. My Princess, has our city been at enmity with the Tharkolians within your memory?”

She shook her head puzzledly, glorious scarlet mane curling over bare shoulders.

“We have had naught, or very little, to do with Tharkol in my reign,” she murmured. “And in the time of my royal father, little enough, beyond occasional trading. The Tharkolians are an unfriendly people and keep to themselves, for aught I know. The many long leagues of grassy plain that lie between our cities have, till now, served as a barrier between us.”

“It would seem, then, that they have attacked us without provocation,” I said.

Her emerald eyes flashed and her superb bosom heaved.

“They shall find they have seized a very deltagar by the tail, then, the fools!” she snapped venomously, naming a ferocious jungle predator feared across the breadth of Thanator for its fighting fury.

“By noon tomorrow, I doubt me not, they shall find the unconquerable legions of Shondakor camped before their gated” she cried.

“I hope you are correct in that, my Princess,” I returned quietly. “But I fear me you are not … .”

“What mean you, Jandar?” she flashed. “Valkar will waste not a moment in following us thither. To raise the legions of the Ku Thad and to mount an invasion of the lands about Tharkol will be pressed with all speed. Ere long the city will be ringed about with our armies, and I doubt me not but that the hosts of Shondakor will make short work of any such resistance as the Tharkolians may attempt. True, the walls of the city seem stout enough, but recall, my Prince, the two flying galleons at our command: by their employment, a host of valiant Shondakorian warriors may easily be carried over the walls of this accursed city, to invest with ease the very citadel of Queen Zamara …”

My beloved was right enough in what she said. The destruction of the City in the Clouds had left us in possession of two of the remarkable aerial warships of the Sky Pirates. These two ornithopters, as the ingenious Zanadarian contrivances are more properly termed, are the Jalathadar, captained by Lord Haakon, a gallant Shondakorian of noble birth who had sailed with the Jalathadar on her heroic maiden voyage against Zanadar*, and her sister ship, the former corsair vessel, Xaxar, which was under the captaincy of her original master, Zantor. We had at this time no particular reason to doubt that the twin sky-ships were the last of their kind aloft. For, while doubtless several if not many of the Zanadarian warships had been absent from the City in the Clouds at the time of our attack on the pirate stronghold and its destruction, the only known source of the levitating gas which permitted the aerial conveyances to resist the gravity of Thanator had been destroyed in the conflagration which had reduced to ashes the city of the Sky Pirates itself. Lacking the means whereby to recharge their hollow hulls and airtight holds with new supplies of the lifting vapor, most if not all of the flying ships by now were doubtless grounded―a fate which would in time render the Jalathadar and the Xaxar unable to navigate the skies of Callisto, as well.

I forbore to press the point, deciding it was better to permit my beloved to retain her hopes of early freedom. Nothing was to be gained by sharing with her the reasoning which impelled me to doubt that our rescue by our friends was as imminent as she believed.

But Ergon sensed my reticence. And later, after Darloona retired to her couch, worn out from the excitement of this unexpectedly adventurous day, he sought me where I stood at the barred window, thoughtfully looking out over the vista of the streets and rooftops of Tharkol, bathed in the multicolored light of the many moons.

“Jandar,” the ugly, faithful Perushtarian growled in my ear, “you had another reason for doubting the legions of Shondakor would be so quick on our trail, did you not?”

“I did, old friend,” I replied somberly.

“May I know it, then?”

I nodded a bit dispiritedly.

“There is no reason why you should not share my inward trepidations, Ergon, although I have good cause to spare my Princess. My reasoning is simple. Valkar will not be able to follow us, because he can have no notion of how we vanished from the copse.”

Ergon blinked at me, his heavy visage grim and thoughtful.

“You mean―”

“I mean that the balloon was released even as the guardsmen entered the wood behind us,” I said in low tones. “Valkar and the others would have first combed the copse itself, to ascertain that we were not hidden somewhere in the thick underbrush. By the time they made certain of that, and began to scour the countryside for some sign of us, the balloon would have been well out of sight. And besides ... I hesitated.

“Yes?” he urged.

I released a weary sigh.

“And besides, Shondakorians know nothing of balloons, which are otherwise unknown across the breadth of Thanator. And there is simply no reason at all for our friends to have looked for us in the skies… ”

Chapter 4 The Empress of Callisto

With dawn the next day my Princess rose rested and refreshed, and filled with zest and good humor. It did not in the slightest serve to dampen her spirits to discover that the mailed legions of the Golden City were not as yet encamped about the walls of Tharkol. Doubtless, she said cheerfully, the host had ridden through the better part of the night, and would arrive later in the morning.

Ergon and I exchanged an eloquent glance, but neither of us disabused Darloona of her groundless optimism that rescue and vengeance were almost at hand. Indeed, we strove to put a cheerful face on events ourselves, in order to protect her peace of mind. I don’t know about Ergon, but, for my part, this was not easy to do; I had spent a perfectly wretched night, tossing and turning, unable to quiet my seething brain until the early hours of morn, in which exhaustion finally induced an uneasy slumber shot through with menacing and unpleasant dreams.

We bathed and breakfasted sumptuously. Again I puzzled―not only as to why the Queen of this city had caused us to be taken prisoner at all―which doubtless we would discover in time―but also as to the peculiar luxury of our imprisonment. Few prisoners are jailed in silken apartments of decor so sumptuous as to befit the housing of state guests of royal blood.

The answer to this minor mystery, too, we would doubtless learn in time, I grimly conjectured.

We had just completed our leisurely meal when the measured tramp of booted feet in the hallway beyond signaled the arrival of guards come to escort us into the presence of the Queen of Tharkol. It seemed that we should soon learn the answer to at least one of the questions which had plagued me―that is, the reason why the Tharkolians had captured us, thus deliberately performing an act of war against a neighboring kingdom with whom they were, ostensibly at least, at peace.

There was no slightest opportunity afforded us for an attempt at escape. The cortege of guards sent to escort us thither numbered, as I recall, about twenty. The number had been calculated to a nicety, I thought. Had they been any fewer, two determined and desperate warriors, such as Ergon and I, might perchance have risked all on a try for freedom. But twenty fully armed warriors … the number was too great; to try for a break would have been utter folly, and quite futile.

Thus the guards formed a hollow square, with Darloona and Ergon and I in the center of the square, and marched us through the sumptuous palace of Tharkol and into the throne room of the Queen without a chance of a fight.

The moment we entered the throne room I stopped short in amazement. And perhaps I should explain at this point in my narrative something of the manner in which princes hold state on the jungle Moon. It has been my experience that the monarchs who rule the city-states of Callisto generally hold court in a large pillared and domed chamber or central hall of their palaces. During such occasions these monarchs are enthroned in a great chair, often situated on a low dais in the center of the hall, a dais usually raised two or three steps higher than the floor of the throne room itself.

Zamara of Tharkol, however, ruled in a different wise!

For one thing, her throne room was the most enormous single room I have ever been in during my entire life. The great hall must have measured no fewer than five hundred feet from wall to wall. It was an enormous circular space, or rotunda, ringed with a circle of marble pillars of immense height and tremendous girth which soared up far above our heads to support a colossal dome so huge it would have done credit to the palace of the mightiest emperor.

Around the walls of this enormous rotunda stood, motionless and in complete silence, a vast throng of nobles and officials and courtiers. These numbered at least three times the number of such officials as generally attended a gathering of the court in my own city of Shondakor. They were Perushtarians, one and all, with scarlet skins and brilliant black eyes, attired in superb and costly garments which scintillated with colored fabrics and flashed with precious metals and sparkled with masses of expensive jewelry. The overall effect was stupendous-stunning!

Holding this motionless and unspeaking crowd back, as it were, a ring of guardsmen stood three deep, entirely encircling the vast echoing room. Daylight glittered blindingly from polished helm, golden cuirass, kite shield, and spear blade. Cloaks of black and scarlet velvet and tall plumes of those same colors adorned these guards, who were, without exception, men of extraordinary height, physical development, and handsomeness. Like so many Adonises in gold, scarlet, and black, the triple ring of guards stood, frozen at attention, immobile as bronze statues. Not one of them was an inch less than six feet tall.

Again, the cumulative effect was staggering.

At the center of the gigantic hall, Zamara sat enthroned.

Her throne was a ponderous and shimmering thing of solid electrum which must have weighed a ton or more. Even if the tremendous throne was only plated with the precious stuff, the amount of gold and silver that had gone into the making of the alloy. represented in itself the ransom of an imperial province.

And, where most of the Princes of Thanator sit in state atop a dais consisting of two or three steps, such proportions were too modest for the likes of Zamara of Tharkol. Her dais was seventeen steps high, and towered above the heads of the throng like a miniature hill!

Her costume consisted entirely of jewels. These were either white or ice-blue diamonds, for the most part, or at least the Callistan equivalent of the diamond, a gem which the races of Thanator name ramazond. The wealth of many kingdoms adorned the body of this young woman.

She was certainly one of the most beautiful creatures I have ever set eyes upon. Slim as a sapling, graceful as a dancer, lithe, supple,. and dangerous as a leopard, the warm scarlet of her naked arms, long legs, and slim waist contrasted startlingly with the bejeweled treasure she wore. Her face was heart-shaped, vital, alive, with enormous and brilliant eyes and a flowing mane of silken black, caught in a jeweled coronet of flashing stones. She sat in the mighty throne, a vision of incredible wealth, dazzling beauty, and awesome power.

I think I gasped at the sight of her. Directly above her soared the immense dome of lucent crystal. Daylight poured down upon her in a flood of golden fire that struck to glory the magnificent gems which adorned her half-naked body. She was stunning … and she knew id

In that moment of deafening silence when we stood, all three of us, frozen in amazement at the magnificence of this spectacle, an imposing chamberlain rang his mace against the marble pave with a crash of thunder.

“Kneel ye in the presence o f Zamara the Magnificent, supreme and unchallenged Empress o f all Callisto!” he boomed out in a deep, rolling voice.

As a field of wheat bends all at once beneath the unseen pressure of a mighty wind, so did all that vast throng of courtiers fall to their knees before the tall throne. Only we three captives remained standing.

Zamara caught our astonished gaze across the vast and glittering hall, and smiled a sly and mocking smile.

“The Prince and Princess of Shondakor and their servant may advance to kiss the feet of their Empress,” she called sweetly.

Ergon growled deep in his barrel chest, but whether it was from the affront of being called our servant, or from the insult to Darloona and myself, I do not know. As for myself, my fists balled and my jaw settled truculently.

Darloona, however, reacted splendidly. She was royalty born, whereas I was but royalty by marriage, if you know what I mean. She drew herself up splendidly, and made no reply. But the contempt she did not express in words was eloquent in every line of her body.

She was superb! Again I was grateful to the fate that had earned me the love of such a woman.

After a moment of eloquent silence, she spoke. The calm tone of her voice and the serenity of her expression belied the fury that must have seethed and roiled within her breast.

“The Princess of Shondakor will be pleased to extend the hand of friendship to the Princess of Tharkol,” she said tranquilly, “in the name of the bonds of mutual respect that have always existed between our cities … and of the peace between them which has, heretofore, remained unbroken for a thousand years.”

The rebuff was exquisitely delivered. Zamara flushed a deeper crimson and bit her lower lip in vexation as a gasp of startled shock went murmuring through the vast and echoing hall. Doubtless Zamara had thought to shame or fluster my beloved in contrast between their persons―Zamara enthroned in a glamour of incredible magnificence, at the height of her imperial power―and Darloona disheveled, in rude hunting costume, her glorious mane tousled and uncombed, her regalia left behind. But such did not occur. The innate majesty and queenliness of my beloved put to shame the ostentation flaunted by the bejeweled, self-styled “empress.” And―what made it all the worse for Zamara―she knew it. And so did everyone else in the room.

We were returned to our apartment and spent the remainder of that day in seclusion. Despite her small victory over Zamara, my Princess was in a perfect fury at this outrage, and paced the length of the room like a caged tigress, boiling with rage. Ergon and I sat together conversing in low tones, discussing our present predicament and our chances of somehow getting out of it.

Although she said nothing about it, I think Darloona knew by now that the host of Shondakor was not going to arrive before the walls of Tharkol in an hour or two, or even a week or two. The very real danger into which chance had thrust us had dawned upon her at last, as it had long since dawned upon Ergon and myself. Darloona’s royal fury at the outrage kept her, for the moment, too busy to think out the implications of our imprisonment. But Ergon and I knew them well.

For even if Darloona’s uncle, Lord Yarrak, did in fact discover our whereabouts and march to lay siege to Tharkol with the host of the Golden City, it would be stalemate. Zamara would display us on the walls and threaten to have us tortured to death before the entire army of Shondakor unless it surrendered―and, I very much feared, it would surrender. The person and safety of the Warrior Princess was sacred to the Ku Thad, and Zamara of Tharkol knew it well.

But there was another element in our predicament that tormented me. And that was the character of Zamara herself. We were prisoners, completely at the mercy of a megalomaniac who, drunk with pomp, pride, and power, had somehow managed to convince herself that she was destined to dominate the entire planet, and did not hesitate to entitle herself Empress of Thanator.

In a word―she was mad.

And there is simply no arguing with an insane person … especially if you happen to be helplessly in her power.

There was no telling what she might do. Because, in her madness, folly, and blind egoism, she was liter ally capable of doing anything!

Hence it was imperative that we make our escape at once …

I have to laugh, looking back on it all. How many times have I read in fantastic fiction of a hero in a similar predicament to that in which Darloona and Ergon and I now found ourselves. Edgar Rice Burroughs, in his wonderful Mars Books, has thrust the valiant John Carter into the clutches of a Barsoomian jeddak a thousand times (indeed, I can’t remember a single one of his marvelously entertaining novels in which the hero is not made somebody’s prisoner at least once in the course of the narrative!), and the ingenuity of the various means whereby the greatest swordsman of two worlds escapes from whatever durance vile he finds himself in has never failed to amuse and entertain me.

But in real life, I am sorry to say, things are very different.

Our cell, though sumptuous, was still a cell―a chamber walled with solid stone, against which the strength of fifty men would exhaust itself without effect. The windows gave forth on a tantalizing vista of wall, street, and rooftops―but were heavily and securely barred with grilles of dense metal, impervious to anything lesser than a battering ram. At least a dozen guards were posted at the only entrance to our suite during every moment of the night and day, and even were I armed and free, it would take a superman to hew a path through so many mailed and vigilant warriors.

No, we were captives, and bound to remain so for the immediate future!

Worn out with futile plans and schemes, we listlessly nibbled at the platters of exquisite viands set out for us, and one by one went to our couches to seek such rest as weary minds might find.

It was several hours later when I came suddenly awake. The room was drowned in darkness, but the window was a tall rectangle of lucent silver lit by the gorgeous orb of Ramavad.

I could not at once think what it was that had so suddenly awakened me. But awake I was, quivering and tense and alert, as if, for all the depth of my exhausted slumbers, some unsleeping faculty had remained on watch, and had roused me as it sensed the stealthy approach of some unseen danger.

There it was again―that furtive ghost of sound!

The slither of sandal leather on naked stone.

And then I froze, every sense thrumming, as if suddenly a gout of ice water had sluiced me from head to foot.

For a man was standing near the head of my couch―I could see the outline of his black―cloaked figure etched in luminous silver from the moonlight streaming through the window―and it was neither Ergon nor Darloona.

Some unknown and mysterious stranger had made his silent, stealthy way into the room by dark of night, and crept towards me in the gloom.

I sprang from my couch and was upon him in a single bound.

And in the very next instant, I was fighting for my life!