The Quest of Kadji

Ah, it must be a pleasant thing,

To drink and feast the night away!

But we with empty bellies sing,

And ride all night-to fight all day!

—Road Song of the Kozanga Nomads

i. Scarlet Eyes

THE HILLS rose, rounded hummocks of grey earth, like the knees of giants, and beyond them to the east, like the giants themselves, huge bumped mountains thrust up athwart the sky. They were old and tired, those mountains, and the wind and weather of millions of years had worn their sharp spires and bladelike crags to smooth rondures.

The mountains marched from north to south, cutting across the drear wastes that lay to the east of Chemedis, and they made an all but impassable barrier to any traveler who dared to venture further east than this, But the flamehaired girl had traversed many thousand leagues of the world on the track of Shamad the Impostor, and mere mountains were not enough to stop her now.

Twilight was falling; the sky darkened slowly. She tugged at the reins and turned the nose of her steed about and thumped her heels in the horse’s ribs to spur the weary stumbling steps. Night must not take them here in the waste; higher up in the mountain country they could perhaps find shelter from the creatures which rumour whispered dwelt about and made the night hideous with their cries.

The old, worn map she had borne with her all the way from Zoromesh on the other side of the world, and which still lay folded and tucked in her sash, told of a safe pass through the wall of mountains that marched down from the ultimate pole. The Khondru, it was called. From here she could almost see it, a notch cut by the Gods in the granite wall that locked the east away behind the frowning ramparts of worn old stone.

At the heels of her steed the great plains-wolf loped, but he too was very weary. His tongue hung from between open, panting jaws, and his plume of a tail dragged in the dust. But he did not desert her side: like, a gliding phantom, silent as a grey shadow the wolf slunk after her, lambent eyes of gold flame blazing through the murk of dusk.

She took an ancient track that rose slowly toward the mouth of the pass, winding between the rounded hills. The mare cantered along slowly, lathered and weary. The girl, Thyra, was weary too, aye, bone-weary with hard riding, but she could not let them rest—not here—not yet.

The world darkened around them. The road lifted under them, and the Khondru grew larger till it loomed mighty through the dusk, like the portal of some unknown world, pillared with darkness.

Beyond the pass the plain stretched away east to the Edge of the World. There was naught to see, for night was upon them now and the first of the Seven Moons of Gulzund trembled on the edge of the sky, an orb of dim opal light.

Thyra made camp in the foothills beyond the world-separating range of mountains. She gathered dry dead brush and touched it to crackling flame with a Word she, had learned in young girlhood from the White Witches of her homeland. The wickerwork pannier slung across the withers of the grey mare held provisions for many days; dried meat and rank green cheese, black coarse bread and a strong dark wine that had honey in its heart and left the taste of forgotten summer on her tongue.

Wrapped in a fringed and hooded cloak, huddled near the fire for warmth, Thyra munched down bread and cheese, sharing the meat with Bazan the grey wolf. Behind her back, warm and breathing hoarsely, the mare crunched and mumbled its portion of grain.

Even in Chemedis, Thyra had taken precautions of keeping fresh foodstores packed and ready against the need for immediate departure. She knew the wily and cunning ways of Shamad the Impostor; thrice he had eluded her ere this. He had a talent for slipping away suddenly from the center of things; she had resolved that never again should he catch her napping and unprepared.

Finishing her rough meal, the young girl leaned back against the haunches of the mare and stretched out her booted legs wearily, drinking the dark honeyed wine. Thinking of Shamad made her think of Kadji. She wondered what had become of him. She remembered everything about him, his clear and fearless blue eyes, his shock of bright gold hair, the warm tenor of his voice, the way his eyes crinkled when he grinned, the sound of his laughter. Her face expressionless, the flamehaired girl thought back over the list of days to the time he had come to her rescue on the plain, joining the fight against the wolves in the whirling snow … and how gloriously he had battled against the villainous treachery of the Perushka at the ambush after leaving golden Khôr.

Her smoky, amber-flaked eyes fathomless, the girl brooded, staring deep into the crackling flames of her small fire.

Kadji … Kadji!

She remembered the clean-limbed strength of his young body when she had tended him during the dark time in the cave when he hovered on the brink of death and only her witch arts had stood between the Nomad youth and the Great Shadow. She had handled his body with hands tender yet impersonal, cleansing him, tending to his bodily needs as he lay helpless, raving … her Vows she had kept ever in mind during the proximity forced upon them by the smallness of the cramped cave and the cold inhospitality of winter … but she was very young and she was very much a woman, and she could not shut out of her mind and heart the strong young manhood of him, or the masculine beauty of his body.

She thought of him now with an odd mixture of tenderness and stubborn anger, remembering how he had seemed to spur her timorous, tentative advances. She had been half a traitor to her own Vows in allowing herself to think of him as a woman though of a man … surely, he had no such soul-sworn oaths to restrain him from thinking her desirable! But he had spurned her overtures coldly and without interest … Kadji!

These thoughts, burning through her heart, made her, ignore the sudden stillness of Bazan at her side, and the sudden tension in the air, until the grey wolf growled, She looked up into the cold, cruel eyes of scarlet flame that glared down at her from the black form that towered up against the night.

ii. The Captive

HE WAS all packed and ready and eager to be gone. In his urgency, Shamad begrudged even the little interval of time during which they had rested and eaten and fed the horses. He paced up and down beside the small fire, impatiently flicking his boots with a riding-crop, turning his coldly handsome face to the darkness beyond at every fancied stir or movement.

Flight had become a way of life to him now; but soon—very soon—he would no longer have to flee. Shamad smiled at the thought and stood motionless, gaze turned inward as if contemplating a golden future. Even in repose he betrayed himself, however. A small nerve jumped at the corner of his mouth, and there were lines of strain etched about his eyes. Those eyes had the fixed glare of a madman, inwardly consumed, burning. His wild eyes, stark in the tragic beauty of his perfect features, formed a fearful contrast. Even motionless, his body as well seemed to strain in tension.

“Lord?”

The deep sibilant voice spoke from the dark shadows beyond the circle of light shed by the campfire. Shamad snarled a curse—turned his wild haggard eyes toward the source of the voice—then stiffened again as he saw what his slave had found.

The Dragonman knelt and lay Thyra’s body on the sand. Her face was white and still, like a mask of carven alabaster. The flame of her hair lay about her thickly, glowing with burnished highlights in the fire’s illumination. Shamad mouthed an obscene word and bent to look more closely at the girl who lay dead or unconscious.

Zamog had brought the horse as well. The mare’s eyes rolled nervously, showing the whites, and it snorted and tugged, trying to drag its reins from the grip of the manlike thing that held them. Perhaps the mare’s velvet nostrils found the snaky odor of his monstrousness repulsive.

Shamad looked the girl over, eyeing the firm rondure of her proud young breasts. They rose and fell, straining the fabric of her tunic, as she breathed shallowly. She yet lived, it would seem.

He barked a query at the Dragonman.

“Where?”

“In the foothills, some ways behind us. There was a dog or wolf with her but it feared me and fled away in the night,” the scaly monsterling said solemnly.

The Impostor grunted. “What of the warrior boy and the old wizard?”

Zamog shrugged, a heaving of broad, apeish shoulders. Firelight glinted on the edges of his scales. His body was entirely scaled, like a serpent, but the scales were different in size and texture. Those on his back and shoulders and upper chest were broad horny plates, tough and thick. They narrowed to fine-grained texture on his face and belly and throat.

“No sign of them, and from the tracks in the sand, they did not accompany her. I wish I could have killed the dog …”

“I wish you had, now it has gotten away and may find the others,” Sharnad said coldly. “They will know something is wrong, for the brute would not willingly have left her side. Odd that it did not fight you.”

The blunt-nose, slope-browed face of the monsterling was inscrutable, scarlet eyes inhuman and feral in the glow of the fire. “Dogs do not like me,” he grunted slowly. “Something about me strikes them mad with terror …”

“Your smell, I suppose,” said Shamad carelessly. “Well, at least you were wise enough to take the horse. We can use it to carry our gear, and we can use whatever provisions the girl had with her … what did you do to her anyway?”

The monster man shrugged and spread blunt-clawed hands wide.

“She did not move after she saw me. I think terror froze her at the sight of me. So I struck her at the base of the neck and she fell. I was afraid she would cry out and warn the others, for I did not at first realize they were not near. I did not kill her …”

Shamad smiled fleetingly. “A good thing you did not! Or I would have made you suffer pain, as I did that time you slew the old noble to get his keys. Do you remember how I bound you to the post and hurt you with hot coals?”

The monsterling’s eyes were dull and opaque, and his voice was heavy and lifeless. “I remember.”

“Very well; keep it in mind, and do not harm the girl. We shall take her with us.”

Zamog stirred uncomfortably.

“Why do we need the girl?” he inquired.

Shamad laughed. “You do not need her, but I do! I have not had a woman in many weeks. Also, if the others catch up with us, we can use her as hostage. The boy warrior is chivalrous and noble of heart … I think he would not like to see me do to the girl what I did to you that time with the burning coals. I think he will lay down his sword and let me take him, to spare her the pain. Then you can kill him—as slowly as you wish!”

The Dragonman flexed his massive hands slowly.

“I like to kill men,” he said thoughtfully.

“I know you do, you ugly beast!” Shamad laughed. “It gives you the same pleasure that I take from women, I have often thought. Well, we are wasting time. Pleasures can come later … I would like to put a league between myself and that Nomad boy before day breaks. Saddle up, and put the girl behind you. Bind her wrists together at your belly so she cannot get free when she awakens. And let us be gone, for the love of the Gods! These hills are not healthy at night.”

A few moments later they rode on. The fourth moon was above the horizon by now and the desert beyond the low humped hills was awash in hazy shifting shadows. The young moon peered down with cold curiosity as the man and the monster and their captive rode straight across the soft sands into the east and vanished slowly from the sight of any eye but hers.

iii. Bazan

THE OLD Easterling wizard was brewing herb tea over the small fire, stirring the steaming fluid in a small iron pot with along-handled spoon of carved horn and sniffing in the rich aromatic fragrance with sleepy pleasure when the thing came out of the darkness toward them.

They had ridden hard, to the edge of their horses’ endurance, and a while ago they had made a rude camp amidst the waste. Now they had eaten and, while old Akthoob brewed his tea, the boy Kadji rested, sprawled out on his blankets, using the saddle as a sort of pillow. Behind him in the lengthening shadows, his black Feridoon pony and the old wizard’s steed munched dried grain from leather feedbags.

The first two moons had just arisen to tremble like orbs of magical colored light on the dim horizon, when the shadowy shape came without a sound out of the blackness of night to stand before them.

It was a great grey shaggy brute with scarlet, lolling tongue and glistening white fangs, and it was enormous—almost as big as the young Nomad warrior himself.

Akthoob uttered a shocked squeal and knocked his herb tea, pot, spoon and all, into the small turf fire.

Kadji sprang to his feet, snatching at his weapons. Then he stayed his hand, for the shaggy grey animal was not making any signs of attack. And it looked familiar… .

He stared into the lambent golden eyes of the creature and whispered a name, “Bazan!”

The grey plains-wolf whined deep in his throat and wagged the shadowy plume of his tail, for all the world like a gigantic dog.

“Kill it—kill it!” old Akthoob squeaked, fluttering his bony hands nervously as if hoping to shoo the wolf away. Then he paused, blinking owlishly at the beast, which had padded over to kneel at Kadji’s feet. Akthoob sucked in his breath between his teeth with a little whistling sound as, greatly daring, the boy warrior bent slowly and scratched his fingers deep in the thick coarse fur that grew behind the wolf’s pointed ears.

The long pink tongue came lolling out and timidly licked the boy’s wrist.

“It is Bazan,” said Kadji slowly, trying to keep the tense excitement out of his voice. “It must be! The plains-wolves do not roam these far wastes at the World’s Edge … and if it is not Thyra’s pet, why should a strange plains-wolf be so friendly … or be here at all, a thousand leagues and more from the habitat of his own kind?”

Akthoob blinked nervously, but was forced to admit that the beast bore much resemblance to the tame wolf who had followed the flamehaired girl.

“It knows the smell of my body from the weeks we dwelt together in the cave, that time I lay sorely injured and close to the black gates of Death,” the boy reasoned. “It knows me for a friend—but why has Bazan left the side of his mistress?”

The old Easterling wizard cleared his throat with a dry cough. “This humble person might suggest that, uh, the honorable lady has met with an accident … some enemy, perchance …”

The firelight flared in Kadji’s eyes. He chewed restlessly on his knuckles.

“You may be right, old man. Shamad is somewhere in this waste of dreary sand …”

“Ay, young sir! But it need not he him we seek has harmed or captured the flamehaired one. There are beasts haunt these desolate wastes at the World’s Edge. Aye, and the shades of long-dead men roam the shadowy margins of the world, if old tales be true …”

“Well, whatever has become of Thyra, her wolf will lead us to where she lies,” the boy warrior said. If hurt or—or—slain,” the youth gulped, choking a little on the word, “Bazan will guide us to the spot. And if taken captive by Shamad or by some other, the wolf will aid us in tracking her and her captors, as he can follow her scent.”

Old Akthoob wearily agreed. “But on the morrow, surely! These old bones ache from hours in the saddle, and the horses are worn to their limit and must rest!”

Reluctantly, Kadji permitted himself to be persuaded, although every fibre of his hot young heart urged him to ride forth into the night on the trail of the flamehaired girl. But he knew it was not a wise course, for if pressed beyond their endurance, the steeds would founder and they must thence forward attempt the crossing of the waste afoot, which were very great folly.

They slept that night rolled in thick blankets beside the guttering fire, and rose with first dawn to eat hastily and ride on toward the Rim of the World.

All that day they rode, with Bazan loping ahead, nose to the ground, guiding them due east. Every two or three hours they paused to rest the horses, and Kadji bitterly begrudged every lost moment. All that day, and much of the night, and for most of the day that followed they rode ever onward, close on the trail of Thyra, and of Shamad the Impostor, too, although they could not be certain of that fact.

As they rode, the little old Easterling wizard grew more and more discomforted. For it looked as if the trail was leading them due east across the world and straight to the gates of Ithombar, king city of the Immortals, whose lofty purple towers were said to rise on the world’s ultimate Edge, and which was forbidden to all mortal men by the Gods.

iv. The Chase

THYRA WAS more frightened than she could recall ever having been in all her life. True, she had been frozen with fear when the hulking form of the weird monsterling had loomed up out of the darkness and had strode for her, scarlet eyes gleaming. But that had merely been the natural fear of being attacked and injured, and she would have felt the same feeling had it been a mindless savage predator come loping from the gloom of night’s darkness to assault her, and not the Dragonman who served the Impostor.

It was Shamad himself who struck cold terror deep into her soul. Something in his icy, tense, beautiful face, something in the mad flame that burned ever in his fixed, glaring eyes, and something in the tension wherewith he held himself, and the harsh note of hysteria that rang ever in his voice, and most of all in his high-pitched, dreadful laughter—this was the thing that filled her heart with the cold, sodden ashes of fear.

Since Zamog the Dragonman had captured her, neither he nor his master had offered her any harm. She was kept bound at all times, her hands tied behind her back when in the saddle, and her legs tied when they slept, and she was completely helpless, save perhaps for her witch powers, which came and went, fickle and untrustworthy, and which could not really be counted upon. If anything, the two males ignored her most of the time, seldom spoke to her, and when a need of the body demanded her attention, it was the blue-scaled monsterling who grudgingly assisted her. She felt no embarrassment or shame under his cold, inhuman eyes, for he was little more than a beast to her mind, and his strange species and her own were so far apart in the spectrum of life that his presence at her ablutions offended her no more than would the presence of her horse or of Bazan, her wolf friend, have given her offense.

But Shamad she feared to the depths of her being, with an icy, heart-stopping terror mingled with a helpless loathing that was indescribable. Partly, this was due to the dread of a normal and healthy mind helpless in the hands of one who was clearly insane. And in part, it was because she knew that he desired her.

For if Zamog regarded her with the aloof, impersonal eye of a beast, Shamad thought of her as a very young and a very desirable woman. She was, of course, a virgin—her youth would have made that certain, even without her Vows as a White Witch of Zoromesh. She was ignorant of adult relations and innocent of their physical aspect, but she had a woman’s instinctive knowledge of them, and all the dread and terror of a young girl helpless in the captivity of a man. She avoided the presence of Shamad—avoided even looking at him as much as was possible, fearing to catch his eye—but she was horribly aware that his staring eyes rested meditatively on her very often, and that his gaze lingered on the slim, firmly rounded lines of her strong young body, on the rise and fall of her firm young breasts, on her sleek hips and on the rondure of her thighs and on her long, slender, adolescent legs.

And yet, despite his obvious interest and her complete and total helplessness before him, he had never touched her, never laid hand upon her, never even tried to kiss her.

The only reason for this forebearance seemed to be the unknown force that drove Shamad on, night and day. He was filled with a strange tension, a restless urgent need to go ever onward. She was aware, from careless words he had let fall, and from bits of conversation between Shamad and his monsterling slave which she had overheard, that he well knew the boy warrior was close behind them, still on the trail of his revenge. But this alone was not enough to cause the fear and tension she saw in Shamad’s every word and look and movement.

Zamog alone was more than a match for the young warrior of the Chayyim Kozanga, aye, and the old Easterling wizard, too. His dangling, apelike arms, swollen with massive thews, his broad, sloping shoulders, short bowed legs, and the immense barrel of his chest, naked save for a harness of belted straps, denoted strength and endurance that was far more than the human. Zamog could crush the life from the Nomad youth with a single hand!

It was not, then, the fear of the vengeance that pursued them and was ever at their heels, that drove the Impostor and his monstrous slave forward with such restless speed. It was something else, some sickness of the soul, perhaps. Or perchance it was, simply, that they bad been running for so long that they could not pause or turn aside or double back, but could only continue running, as if impelled by a need that had by now become an unbreakable habit, a condition of life. It was strange; it was, somehow, horrible, this endless running away from something that followed close behind.

But then, the coldly beautiful man was—mad.

TIME BEGAN to blur together for Thyra. The hours became an endless procession of blurred sameness. They paused to rest or eat or sleep infrequently. The jarring ache in her bones, the bodily exhaustion that sapped her strength, the pain of her bound wrists, where tight thongs bit into her tender flesh, the chafed agony in her thighs caused by endless hours in the saddle, all of these dulled the edge of her consciousness. And the numb terror in her heart deadened her to any sense of time or place … they went ever onward, by night and by day, until it seemed at any moment they must come at last to the world’s remote and ultimate Edge … and somehow a ghost of fear awoke within the numb, weary mind of the flamehaired girl at that thought … for it seemed to her that when they did arrive at the Edge the mad, restless demon of pursuit that dominated the broken mind of Shamad would urge him to goad them on and over the Edge of the World … and they should fall forever through the darkness Of That Which Lay Beyond The World, the golden stars rushing past them in their endless fall … to fall forever through the limitless depths of the Universe … and Death itself would claim them before ever they reached whatever mystery was the Bottom of Infinity …

ON ACROSS the grey dunes they sped, and whether Kylix the sun star rode in the blue vault of heaven or whether the black dome of night was lit by many wandering and multicolored moons, the girl could not say.

And, after an eternity, they reached the Edge. And there was nowhere else to go.

v. Wings of Storm

IT HAD been brewing all that day, and in the last hours before the sun star sank in a funeral pyre of crimson flame in the distant west, the storm struck at last.

They had known it was coming, the boy warrior and the old Easterling wizard. Thick clouds, black and turgid, swollen with vapors, had reared their dim castles against the sky since early afternoon. Within their tumultuous heart, the. storm had been slowly engendered.

Now it spread its wings and struck at them.

Wind buffeted them and stinging sand blinded them, and viewless hands plucked and tore at their garments until Kadji could almost believe in Akthoob’s tales of the ghosts of the dead who haunted these drear wastelands.

Gasping for breath, he sucked in dry sand and spat it out while fumbling with a bit of cloth to cover his eyes from the howling winds and the whirling grains of sand they bore on their mighty wings.

Beneath him, Haral stumbled and fell to his knees. Kadji slid down from the saddle and grabbed the reins, leading the little black Feridoon pony to where Akthoob stood. The old man had already dismounted and stood with his face pressed against the shoulder of his horse to keep the flying sand from his eyes.

“We can’t ride in this murk,” Kadji yelled in the old wizard’s ear.

“This person agrees … yet we could be buried if we stand here like this,” Akthoob shouted in hoarse reply.

“What can we do, then? There is no place wherein to take shelter from the storm—the land is as flat as the palm of my hand!”

At length, they decided to continue forward, but afoot, leading the horses. Muffling the heads of their steeds by winding cloth about them so as to protect eyes and ears and nostrils from the stinging blows of the howling sandstorm, and wrapping their cloaks about their own faces, the boy warrior and the old wizard led the horses forward, tugging at the reins. The grey wolf, Bazan, loped on ever ahead.

The journey seemed endless. The wind howled like a horde of demons and they were like to have smothered in the thick cloaks. Wind tore at them as they plodded forward, leaning into the blast, and their feet slipped and slid in the swirling sand underneath them. They had no idea where they were going, nor in which direction, and they dared not unveil their eyes in an attempt to tell their direction from the glow of the sun star. For sand-storms here in the Waste at the World’s End can strike men blind: the winds that drive the stinging particles of sand have traveled far, and may perchance have begun on the surface of another world, blowing across the empty gulfs between this world of Gulzund and the next.

Thus they were plodding heavily along, heads downward, gasping for breath, feet slipping and sliding in the unsteady footing—when Zamog struck!

It was Haral saved the life of its young master. The Nomad youth, blinded and deafened by the storm, could not have seen the, lurking Dragonman in time to defend himself. But the sharper senses of the little black pony scented the nearness of danger and of death. The pony halted suddenly, tossing its head, and neighed in a muffled cry. Then, as the blinded Kadji fumbled for the reins, the Feridoon pony reared, and struck out with sharp flying hooves whose blow would have smashed the skull of a man.

The hulking Dragonman had come out of the flying murk and was standing behind Kadji, lifting a gigantic scimitar. The monsterling had tracked the two humans and their horses for hours, ever since Shamad, arriving at the World’s End and unable to go any farther, had sent him back to slay those who rode in pursuit. The lashing winds, the stinging sand, had bothered the giant Dragonman not the slightest. When the flying sand grains became painful, Zamog unsheathed the hard, transparent nictitating membranes within his eye-sockets and slid them across the scarlet eyes. Like all his monstrous kind, the Dragonman had no proper eyelids and slept with his eyes open.

The horse surprised him. He had not really noticed the little black pony, his attention being fixed on the blinded, muffled Nomad boy. He had unwisely discounted the possibility of danger from the little black horse—very unwisely, as it turned out. For as Haral reared, the pony struck out with sharp hooves. Iron plates shod those hooves, and they were driven by the coiled and massive power of the, horse’s mighty shoulders, stronger and heavier than Zamog’s own.

One caught him in the shoulder, half spinning him around. The other caught him full in the face.

Kadji slipped in the loose sand, trying to hold onto the reins of the bucking, kicking horse, and fell to his knees. Off balance, Zamog swung wildly but the scimitar whistled past Kadji and spun itself from the Dragonman’s nerveless grip. The sledgehammer blow of the horse’s hoof had broken his shoulder, and he would fight with that scimitar no more.

Kadji tore the cloth from his face and ripped the sacred Axe from the bosom of his robes and sprang at the staggering figure of Zamog, looming like some shambling demon of the storm amidst the flying murk.

But Haral’s thundering hooves had won the fight. The second blow had taken the hapless monsterling full in the face. The force of a battering ram was behind that iron-shod hoof. The skull of a human being would have splattered like a broken egg shell before so terrific a blow. The tougher and heavier bone of the Dragonman’s skull had held—but just barely.

Zamog lifted a mask of streaming horror to face the attack of the Nomad youth.

Both eyes were gone, smeared to liquescent ruin. The lower jaw was broken and hung and waggled helplessly, baring glistening and terrible fangs that could have torn Kadji’s flesh to scarlet ruin if they could have closed on him. But they would never close again.

It was a marvel that the Dragonman lived. In fact, it was a miracle that he was still on his feet. Staggering, blinded, one arm hanging like a dead weight from the shattered shoulder, the blue-scaled monsterling yet groped for the boy warrior with his single hand. Even then, had that hand closed on Kadji, such was the strength in that one good arm that it could have crushed the Red Hawk of the Chayyim Kozanga to mangled death.

But it did not.

The Axe of Thom-Ra lifted, glittering in the wan light of the dying sun star, and came flashing down.

The first stroke took Zamog full in the chest with a heavy thunk like a forester chopping wood. The glittering blade sank two inches into the tough, blue-scaled flesh: a rib or two cracked; Zamog staggered back, retaining his balance with some difficulty.

The second axe-blow took the Dragonman full on the side of the neck, half shearing off his head, and severing the spinal cord. It was a terrible wound: oily, malodorous serpent-gore pumped in a thick, gluey rope from a cut artery, slithering down his massive body to stain and besplatter the sands underfoot.

Zamog fell, slowly, in sections, like a tower whose foundations have eroded away. He went to his knees, then to all fours, then be sprawled at full length in the shifting sands. His broad, flat-tipped tall slapped the sand a time, then twitched spasmodically. And he died there in the cold grey sands at the World’s Edge.

The sandstorm ended shortly thereafter, and the two mounted and rode forward again—due east.

vi. Before the Purple Gates

THYRA AWOKE slowly, as though from the spell of an interminable dream. For a long moment she merely lay there on the hard flat rock, half-wrapped in a torn cloak, blinking sleepily around her.

The towers of Ithombar, king city of the Immortals, rose directly before her. To incredible heights they soared, those slender, lofty spires. All of sparkling purple crystal were they built, and after a fashion unknown to mortal masons, for neither of block nor of brick were they composed, but of one fantastic mass of glittering glassy stuff, without seam or jointure. The imagination trembled and veered giddily away from picturing the furnaces in which those thousand-foot towers had been cast … all in one piece.

Directly before her rose the gates of the undying city wherein resided beyond death the mightiest and holiest of seers and saints, poets and philosophers—the great names and minds and hearts of this world of Gulzund, who had won their way to this place of perfect and unchanging peace one by one, over innumerable ages.

She stared at the mighty portals unbelievingly. Then, almost, she could have laughed. Poor Shamad! The last dream of conquest and empire was beyond even his lust to realize!

For the gates were … locked.

The rasp of boot-leather on dry gritty stone stung her to attentiveness. She turned her head around and froze, like one who wakes to find a deadly viper coiled within striking range.

She turned and saw Shamad the Impostor seated on a flat boulder not ten strides away. He squatted, tailor fashion, and his strong, white hands played restlessly with a slender sharp knife. He was watching her, a faint smile on his face.

And suddenly she was very afraid.

Perhaps because fear took hold of her soul so completely, she stared at him, taking in very detail of his appearance. His raiment, once rich and kingly, was worn and stained and frayed to rags. The flesh had fallen from his powerful frame, leaving it mere bone and sinew and sun-dried flesh.

He was in need of a shave, his hollow, sunken cheeks shadowed by a growth of heavy stubble. His lips, which moved continuously, as if he whispered to someone she could not see, were colorless, dry and cracked. Small beads of foamy spittle glistened at the corners of his mouth.

His eyes burned feverishly in hollowed sockets, ringed with unhealthy circles. He looked ill; ill unto death.

His bright gaze shifted from her breasts to her face when he noticed that she was looking at him. He grinned, a rictus devoid of mirth, and spread lean hands in a gesture of self-mockery.

“Welcome to my throne room!” he said, laughingly. “My empire is somewhat smaller than it has been, and my court reduced in numbers to just you and me. Zamog”—he twitched his bony shoulders, and snatched a quick glance behind him—“has gone to slay the boy, your lover; but that was hours and hours ago; I fear even my loyal monsterling has left my service, like all the rest. Faithless, faithless! But I still have you,” he said, his eyes returning to the girl suddenly.

Thyra was very afraid now. Her heart labored behind her ribs and her throat felt dry as dust. She sought to speak and coughed painfully.

“I have set wine beside you: drink, drink,” he said tonelessly.

She drew one weak hand from under the cloak, found a cup, and drank deeply of the lukewarm, strong red wine. Eyes hooded, the Impostor watched her broodingly, slapping his dagger nervously against the rock with little dull ringing sounds.

Putting down the empty cup, she looked away from the ghastly expression on his face and stared up at the walls and gates of the silent, mysterious city. He followed the direction of her gaze, and his face contorted in a snarl.

“Locked, locked, locked, locked,” be said harshly, then laughed, gesturing. “There is nowhere left for me to run!”

She followed his gesture and looked suddenly for the first time at the World’s Edge.

As far as the eye could see in the harsh morning glare, a cliff of stone ran from horizon to horizon, cutting the sky in half. The desert waste simply stretched up to a point about thirty yards from where they were—and stopped. Beyond it there was only empty sky, blue, vacant, birdless. Not even a cloud was there to stain the purity of the azure infinity.

It was apalling. It was too vast to endure. The mind flinched away from it numbly, refusing to think of it. She averted her eyes from the terrific immensity—and found him staring at her.

“I understand why the boy, your lover, has followed me all this weary way …”

“He is not my lover! He has never touched me! I am a Virgin of Zoromesh and my Vows forbid me to—” she said hotly; he waved her words away with the hand that held the sharp knife.

“Words, words! You love him, do you not? And he, you?”

“Yes, I love Kadji, with all my heart and soul,” she said a trifle unsteadily. “As for him, 1 cannot say—never has he given me a look, a word—”

“Phaugh! You are children, children! He is sworn to a Quest of vengeance, to revenge the honor of his tribe—of course he is forbidden to the love of women, he cannot even speak a word of love, any more than can you!” Shamad said restlessly.

Breathlessly, Thyra looked at the madman with wide astonished eyes. Could it be so? Could that be why Kadji had seemed to rebuff her timid overtures back there in the cave months ago? It must be—what fools they both had been! Each sworn to chastity of body and of speech, by almost identical vows—and each not understanding the other was similarly bound!

“… but why have you pursued me, girl? That is the one thing I have never understood. I have never harmed you,” he said, almost plaintively. She steeled herself and looked him directly in the face: she was weak from endless hours of riding, so weak and exhausted she had swooned in the saddle; he could strike before she could untangle her limbs from the torn cloak and rise; but she spoke anyway. Let it end here, she thought.

“Have you forgotten how you dispatched your assassins to slay me—me, a Blood Princess of the House of Holy Azakour?”

He chewed on his lips thoughtfully, gazing at her with eyes a little sideways, eyes terribly bloodshot and weary.

“There is that, I suppose,” he mumbled.

“But the real reason is that the sisterhood to which I belong has sent me hither to destroy you,” she said, trying not to let her voice tremble. “For I am of the White Witches of Zoromesh, not yet a full sorceress, merely a girl of the novitiate; my mother pledged me to the sisterhood when I was but a child, and the Elder Sisters cared for me and sheltered me after she died.”

A spark of interest flashed in his eyes.

“The White Witches? What have I ever dose to offend them?’ he cried, somewhat surprised by this revelation.

“You offend this earth of Gulzund by merely existing upon it,” she said stoutly, drawing strength and courage from some unknown source within. “Your vile usurpation of the Holy Name and Throne of Yakthodah reeks to heaven and is an affront to the very Gods. They will not tolerate that one of baseborn blood besoil the Holy Dragon Throne! Thus was I sent to slay you if I could; if I could not, another would have followed me, and another …”

Suddenly Shamad leaped to his feet and sprang down from the flat-topped boulder and stalked over to her. His face was white and twitching as if something in her words had goaded him beyond all endurance.

“Then they had best unleash another witch on my track,” he snarled. “For I shall slay you, aye, and that beardless boy that follows, and the old man, and that traitor Zamog, too, if still he lurks about—and then myself, I suppose.”

Without another word he stooped and the sharp dagger blade flashed like a steel mirror in the fierce sun as he drove it at her breast—

vii. World’s End

OUT OF NOWHERE a great grey wolf appeared. A shaggy, shadowy wolf, gigantic, fangs bared, growling thunderously. In his lean-muzzled face, eyes blazed like discs of golden flame.

He gathered himself, haunches tensing hackles rising into a rough crest down his spine. Claws scratched and scrabbled on the naked rock as he seized a purchase and in the next instant launched himself into space like a grey thunderbolt.

Shamad had frozen in astonishment at the sudden appearance of the monstrous wolf. It was as if he had solidified out of blank nothingness like an apparition. So startled was he that he had involuntarily checked his knife blow and the blade’s wicked point hovered above the flamehaired girl’s breast.

Then the mighty wolf hurtled through the air and crashed into the stooping figure of the crazed Impostor. Fearsomely long, sharp fangs caught at the wrist of his knife hand; jaws crunched—bones snapped—blood spurted. Shamad shrieked, high and shrill like a child, as the jaws of the savage wolf closed on his hand.

The impact of the wolf’s leap knocked the man flying. He fell on his back to the naked rock, the dagger spinning away to tinkle against stone.

The man shrieked again as he feebly tried to keep the snarling, snapping fangs from his face. The fetid, panting breath of the giant wolf was acrid and burningly hot on his face. In seconds his face and throat were slashed to ribbons and streaming with gore. He raised a face like a horrible scarlet mask, wherein only the mad, glaring eyes were still recognizable, in one heart rending glance at the frozen girl.

Then out of nowhere Kadji came, blocking out the sun, darkening the sky, face grim as vengeance itself.

In two great strides he was upon the struggling tangle of man and wolf. He bent, locked strong brown fingers in the ruff of fur at the wolf’s shoulder and tore him away from the bubbling, shrieking thing.

The Axe of Thom-Ra lifted once, catching the sun, then fell in a mighty whistling stroke. The keen steel rasped and rang against naked rock. Blood squirted, startlingly scarlet, unbelievably beautiful pure color, in the sun.

And the severed head of Shamad rolled across the rocky floor to thud like an immense, soft, obscene fruit against the locked gates of the purple city.

Thus was the honor of the Chayyim Kozanga Nomads revenged.

Where all had been noise and motion and horror, now was a space of stillness. His battle fury calmed, the great wolf, Bazan, came padding over to where Thyra half lay, half crouched. The grey wolf whined deep in his throat and his long pink tongue came out to lick her cheek and the shaggy plume of his tail wagged furiously, for all the world like a great dog’s.

“Well, that’s done, bless us all!” sighed Old Akthoob from somewhere in the background. Thyra laughed weakly.

Kadji bent and tore the throat of the corpse’s garments open. The great gold medallion of the Dragon City lay against the naked breast of the headless thing. Thyra could have sworn the false corpse of the Emperor, which Shamad had left behind in the Khalidür in his place while he fled in secret, hoping thus to delay pursuit, had worn the sacred emblem. But that must have been a forgery; Shamad could not bear to leave the ancient medallion of the Dragon behind and had worn it all this while.

Kadji removed the holy, precious thing and placed it within a deep pocket of his tunic. Then he bent and scrubbed clean the blade of the Axe of Thoma-Ra in the dry sand at the base of the flat boulder on which only a few minutes before the Impostor had squatted. Then he kissed the Axe which the War Prince of the Gods had given into the hands of his first ancestor many ages ago, and replaced the sacred weapon in his girdle.

Then while Thyra watched, he took up the headless corpse and bore it to the World’s Edge. At his curt command, the old Easterling wizard gingerly took up the gory head of Shamad, holding it by a lock of hair, and carried it over to where Kadji stood on the brink of the Infinite.

The boy warrior raised the corpse above his head and then hurled it over the Edge of the World, even as old Akthoob, with a prim little expression of distaste, hurled the head after it. Over the World’s Edge they fell, head and body, body and head, to fall forever and forever in the mocking gaze of the cold and watching stars.

Then the Nomad youth came over to where Thyra knelt and raised her in his strong arms. His handsome face, sunburnt, lean-jawed, serious, was very close to her own.

“How long were you there behind us?” she asked faintly.

“Long enough to hear that you loved me,” he said. “Long enough to learn that you were bound by the same vows of chastity that sealed my lips against any expression of love. What fools we were, girl!”

“I have fulfilled my mission,” she said dreamily. “Shamad is dead and the Gods are well pleased; the world is rid of him, and the Elder Sisters will be happy. I shall renounce my Vows; I have taken only the first of the Vows, the very little and unimportant Vows. Now I can speak of love: I love you, Kadji. Kadji!”

His eyes, clear, fearless, hawk-bright, stared into her own.

In a low voice he said: “And my Quest is done; the Axe of Thom-Ra has drunk deep of the blood of Shamad the Impostor, and the honor of my people is avenged! Thus have I fulfilled my own vow, and am released of its strictures. And now I, too, can speak of love. I love you, Thyra; I have loved you from the first moment I saw you there in the streets of Nabdoor-town, dressed in the gaudy finery of a Perushka wench. I have never loved any girl but you!”

The boy’s arms tightened around her and they kissed, a long, deep, endless kiss. At last they drew apart a little, and the girl lay her head on the boy’s shoulder and sighed a little, and laughed a little.

“What a strange place for us to meet, and to love at last,” she said huskily. “Have lovers ever exchanged their vows here at the World’s End?”

He smiled but did not answer, being content merely to stand and hold her close.

Behind them old Akthoob watched with twinkling eyes, a fond expression on his bony features.

“Ah!” he coughed, “ ‘Twas World’s End for the false Shamad! For you twain, this humble person suggests it is not World’s End but World’s Beginning …”