Under the Green Star

Chapter 6 THE SHADOW OF AKHMIM

The banquet to which we were bound on that particular evening was one of the frequent ceremonial functions tradition required of the Jewel City monarch.

The life of the princess was bound to every side by centuries-old patterns of enormously complicated tradition and ritual. Periodically, the Princess of Phaolon was required to feast representatives of the several aristocracies of her realm; I have no idea as to the reason why. It may have been something in the nature of a renewal of the aristocrats in their rank, or a symbolic token of the interdependency of the sovereign and the aristocracies, ritualized by their sharing of a common meal, or something to do with the national religion, which as yet I understood imperfectly.

At any rate, such occasions were a crashing bore, interminable evening—long meals of thirty or forty courses, interspersed with flowery speeches, ceremonial dances and poetry recitals, elaborate courtesies, and obscure traditional gestures, such as the pouring of three drops from every wine-cup into silver salvers borne around the banquet hall by an endless succession of pages, for no conceivable reason or purpose.

Certain different incenses were burned during certain courses by Laonese priests in elaborately different robes and accouterments stationed at small altars situated here and there. Something like spruce gum was burned during a course of small cubes of beef-like meat in cream sauce, skewered with tiny silver forks; a thickly odorous incense like myrrh was sizzled in golden pans during a course of breaded fish; a sharp and pungent perfume, like pine needles, was poured on braziers of coals during yet another course consisting of small slivers of sweet white meat cooked in sugary wine.

The elaborately artificial aspects of these interminable banquets was unendurable. Nobody knew why or how these customs had arisen, but arisen they had, and, once hallowed by a few centuries of tradition, a facet of behavior became crystallized in Laonese society and was there to stay.

Luckily for me, during the early phases of my education when I was still largely unfamiliar with the language, no one required me to deliver any of the lengthy speeches, flowery compliments, or recitals of national poetry, which droned on more or less constantly during the succession of courses. I was politely ignored during these banquets, for it was thought that a ritual period of acclimatization was required of one who had but recently returned from the World Above, as the Laonese conception of heaven is termed. So I just nibbled at the various courses, guzzled wine, and tried to ignore the so-called festivities.

Custom, ritual, precedent, and tradition rule the Laonese aristocracies and, to a lesser extent, the common folk, and this endlessly complicated code of ceremonial behavior controlled and governed virtually every phase and detail of everyday life. In this, as in certain other things, it resembled the Chinese civilization of the imperial periods.

I use the plural, “aristocracies,” because the Laonese society was an hierarchical one, made up of a number of different ranks. There were, for example, what might be called the landed gentry—members of ancient families with an hereditary claim to certain territories of the realm. Members of this aristocracy were known as the thurkuz. Their highest ranking member and most vocal spokesman was a stiff-necked old woman, the Kyra Vaonica du Kaikoos, which translates as Lady (or Dame) Vaonica of Kaikoos; she was a sort of duchess.

The second aristocracy was made up of those families descended from Laonese patriots or heroes who had been ennobled for their services to the throne, just as English monarchs have bestowed titles on their war heroes like Lord Nelson or the Duke of Wellington. The custom of honoring outstanding heroes with ranks and titles was popular among earlier Laonese sovereigns, but had died out somewhat lately. However, these honors were of a different kind and nature from those of the thurkuz, the landed gentry. This second aristocracy was called the aophet, which means something like “sprung from the heroes.” In my incarnation as Lord Chong, I belonged to this particular aristocracy myself. In fact, I now took precedence as highest ranking peer and spokesman of the aophet, displacing a suave baron named lohom who had been senior lord of the aophet before my revivification.

There was a third aristocracy whose differences from the others was a subtle one, so subtle I never quite managed to grasp the difference. It consisted of those with titular honors, some exceedingly fanciful, others thoroughly devoid of meaning as far as I could see. This particular aristocracy, the iophua, held hereditary honors such as Lord Custodian of the Nine Ivory Batons, or Privy Guardian of the Silver Book of Hshan, or High Steward of the Scarlet Flask, and so on.

A tradition-encrusted people, the Laonese! For never once did I see the Lord Custodian with a baton of any kind, much less an ivory one. The High Steward had a noticeable fondness for the wine flask, all right, but I never saw him with a scarlet one. And as for the Privy Guardian, from the way he usually snored through the poetry recitals, I cannot conceive of him as possessing interest in any book, much less Hshan’s.

There was one thing that could be said for these formal banquets, and that was that they gave me a chance to see Niamh.

At these functions, the Laonese dine from low taborets while seated cross-legged on cushions. But the princess and I, as only befitting our superior degree, sat in regular chairs at opposite ends of a dais. I thus had the pleasant opportunity to feast my eyes on her while feasting my belly.

How lovely she was! Sapling-slim, demure, exquisite as a fairy princess. I have had little to do with women; during my life on Earth, as a cripple, it seemed to me impossible that I could ever be anything other than an object of either pity or contempt in the eyes of a beautiful woman. Desiring to be neither, I avoided their company, although my appetite was as normal as that of any whole and healthy man. Now I basked in the bliss of her nearness, and the shy sidewise looks she sometimes cast at me, demurely, from under silken lashes, did not escape me. How wondrous strange it was, to feel myself the object of a beautiful girl’s admiration! How thrilling to know myself tall and strong, a hero, a warrior of immortal deeds, in the eyes off all who looked upon me!

At times I questioned my wisdom in lingering here on the World of the Green Star. I was not the mythic Hercules they fancied me to be, but a strange wanderer come hence on a weird voyage, caught in a body that was not my own, enjoying the worship and adulation which belonged to someone else. I feel certain that the old sage, Khin-nom, doubted the truth of my revivification. Suppose questions were asked of me concerning my first life as Lord Chong—questions I could not answer, bearing on a life that I had never lived? Would it not be wiser for me to quit this borrowed body and return to take up the life that was my own?

I hesitated—I lingered—I procrastinated; and can any wonder that I put off returning to the body of a cripple, turning my back on this weird and gorgeous world of mile-high trees, jewelbox cities, and elfin knights mounted on dragonflies? For what was there for me to go home to, but a dreary life of books and dreams, prisoned in a paralyzed carcass that could not take a step without assistance?

And so I stayed on … and lost my heart.

Time and again I puzzled over the meaning of that dramatic scene I had interrupted with my involuntary resurrection. What was the substance of that tense confrontation I had spied upon unseen, when the cold-faced man in robes of eye-hurting yellow, crowned with spiky black crystals, had stood in challenge before the tall throne of Phaolon and hurled his insolence in the flowerlike face of Niamh the Fair?

The elderly philosopher but tugged at his indigo beard, avoiding my questions by ignoring them and pressing on with our unremitting language lessons. Captain Panthon, usually my prime source of information, seemed oddly reluctant to reply to my queries. I have since concluded that his reluctance was in deference to hallowed tradition: men of the khaweng-ya, the warrior class, do not discuss high matters; the doings of their lords and betters are subjects unfit for gossip or speculation.

Bit by bit I pieced together a patchwork picture of the situation, gathering hints and clues from a careless word let fall in my presence, a scrap of conversation overheard, or veiled references murmured when I was not supposed to be listening.

The man in the yellow robes, it seemed, had been Akhmim, who was the prince of another tree-city called Ardha. His ultimatum was a marriage proposal!

It seems that precedent and tradition hallow the masculine gender, alone deemed fit to wield sovereignty. A Queen regnant is a novelty unheard-of in all the placid millennia of Laonese annals. It is not exactly that a woman ruler is forbidden by any law of gods or men: it is simply something new and strange and different. And to the timid, ephemeral Laonese, whose lives are dominated by ritual and antique custom, the new and novel is anathema, or at least highly suspect.

Niamh was a slave to custom, too; but it is the art of a monarch to interpret tradition in support of the royal will. And the will of princes is less subject to the ghostly authority of the past than are the wills of those who are accustomed to being ruled over by princes.

For ages a tension has stretched between the two tree-cities. Nothing so overt as war—that custom happily is most rare here on the World of the Green Star—but a certain rivalry, an unease. The folk of Phaolon, then, were on the horns of a particularly galling dilemma. On the one hand, every precept of custom and tradition cried out that a princess could not rule alone; on the other, they loathed the notion of yielding the hand of their beloved Niamh to the unwelcome and unloved Tyrant-Prince of Ardha.

Niamh had weighed the custom of masculine rule against the traditional envy and suspicion the folk of Phaolon felt for the men of Ardha, and had chosen the course of action least offensive to tradition—she would rule alone.

On the day of my resurrection, Akhmim of Ardha had come with an ultimatum. The benign will of the World Above, the unanimous precedent of a thousand regnant kings, the crushing weight of age-old authority, demanded she wed a prince of her rank and yield primacy to him. Only the shadowy divinities of the World Above knew what shattering thunderbolts of calamity and cataclysm would ensue, if a woman maintained her grasp on the throne of Phaolon in blind defiance of tradition and holy precedent. Did the Princess Niamh, in her mad arrogance and folly, possess some secret sign from heaven that the World Above would tolerate her mad ambition? Akhmim cried aloud to the Green Star for some token or omen that heaven favored her in her folly—

And on that fateful moment, I thundered to life in my tomb!

Small wonder that at the time I sensed my coming forth had disconcerted Akhmim, throwing him off-balance. “Off-balance” indeed! He had been petrified with horror, frozen with unbelieving shock. What sign could have been more dramatic than my springing to life, the shards of my splintered sarcophagus ringing about me on the glistening pave?

None could blame the Princess of Phaolon for interpreting my miraculous return to the lands of the living as a sign from the World Above. The timing of the event alone confirmed it. A more sensationally dramatic affirmation of Niamh’s sacred right to her throne could hardly have been imagined than the sudden reincarnation of the mighty Chong, hero of a thousand legends, the mythic defender of her own great dynasty in the age of her forefathers.

Akhmim, crushed, shaken to the core, had fled the hall in confusion, and no word had come from him since.

But his shadow lay over the Jewel City like a grim pall, like a cold gloom of ominous fate to come. So close had Akhmim stood to the throne he coveted, so swift had fate snatched it from his grasp, that few could doubt he would not seek again to fulfill his desires. And in his path, I stood alone!

Chapter 7 THE DANCE OF THE ZAIP

The time came when I had mastered the lovely, musical language of the Laonese.

To tell the truth, the ease and rapidity with which I had learned the tongue of this strange world surprised me. It even frightened me a little.

It was not so much like learning a new language—a dreary process of word drills and memorizing—as it was like remembering a language I had known long, long ago, and all but forgotten with the years.

Could there be any truth to the Laonese belief that I was their mighty hero of old come again? Who was this Kyr Chong the Mighty—how was it that his body had been so perfectly preserved that when I, a wandering spirit, had chanced to wander near, it could be reanimated to live again?

One pleasant result of mastering the tongue was that, now my lessons were done, the old sage Khin-nom permitted himself to be engaged in conversation. The wily old philosopher even granted me the answers to a few questions.

He smiled slyly, and replied to my query in his soft, purring voice: “Surely my lord recalls that he did not ever die, but fell victim to the wizard’s spell!”

“I remember nothing of my former life, Khin-nom; you who have had to patiently teach me the tongue all over again must surely know that! I suspect death must be as shattering a trauma as birth, and spirits thrust forth suddenly on the dark wind disperse, their memories wiped clean by the cataclysmic experience … but what do you mean, I never died? What wizard—and what spell?”

We were in the sage’s own suite, that day. A cool, pleasant, empty room of whitewashed walls, and many windows open to a murmuring infinity of leafy solitude. A room filled to the brim with peace and calm; a room for contemplation.

From a rack of scrolls he plucked one heavy tube of parchment. Minute rows of hooked characters marched up and down the sheet when he unfolded it, and his narrow finger followed them up and down, down and up—the Laonese script is written boustrophedon, like Hittite: back and forth, as an ox plows a field.

He chanted some poetry at me, but I understood little of it. The bardic epics that form the center of Phaolon’s national literature, the so-called Eight Classics, are written in an obscure, highfalutin diction very unlike everyday speech.

“What is that, Khin-nom?” I asked impatiently.

He booded his eyes, voice suave. “The epic of your Thirty Deeds, my lord! The thirtieth and last was to rid the world of that wizard called Kryaphaom, the Lord of Ghosts. ‘Twas he who sundered your spirit from your flesh and hurled it forth into the void of mists beyond the world, beyond the Green Star itself. You struck him down to death in that same moment, but already the death-like sleep of a thousand years was upon you. Our sacred forefathers mourned you, and preserved your flesh in pure crystal against the time ordained, when your spirit should come wandering home from beyond the stars…”

My skin crawled at the sly whisper, and my nape hairs prickled in primal awe. His account was uncanny in its closeness to the facts—for my spirit had in truth come to this world from beyond the stars. From the dim twilight of elder Mars the flickering beacon of the Green Star had called to me with a strange fascination … could it be that I remembered it from another life?

Could it be that I really was Chong, or had once been him, many lives before this last? Did the eternal human spirit travel an endless cycle of birth and death and rebirth, as the Buddhists taught and the lamas of Tibet believed? But if so, why was it that I remembered nothing of my former life as Chong the Mighty, hero of Phaolon and ancient defender of its age-old throne?

Do the memories of one life fade, under the accumulation of experiences, as life upon life is laid upon the soul like a palimpsest?

The implications of this suggestion were soul-shaking, world-changing: I set them from me firmly, changing the subject.

“How do you, who dwell under eternal mists, know anything of the stars?” I demanded.

“There are rifts in the clouds that veil us from heaven,” he said slyly. “In the same way, there may come rifts in the forgetfulness that clouds my lord’s mind, and gleams of memory from his life as Chong may shine through…”

An even more pleasant result of my mastery of the language was that now I saw much more of the exquisite princess.

And not just at those endless formal banquets which I have described, either; we had several meetings, private audiences they were, for once she learned I had conquered the tongue, she was eager to talk with me. I sweated, dreading questions about my former life which I could not answer. Happily for my peace, old Khin-nom warned her that my memories were yet few and fragmentary, that the many lives I had lived through on far, alien worlds lost in the vastness of the universe had dimmed and drowned out my memories of life in ancient Phaolon. Thank God for Khin-nom’s tact! He had the delicate gift of adroit distortions of unpleasant truths that could have made his fortune in diplomacy.

I could never figure him out, the wily old sage. Was he on my side, or against me? I always wondered what he really thought about me; I can’t believe he thought me truly Chong the Mighty come again, and many were the sly, suave insinuations he delivered in this direction; however, he never sought to expose me for an interstellar impostor, and at times, as above, in preface to my first private audience with Niamh, he subtly protected me from exposure.

Like most philosophers, he was himself an enigma.

My first audience was held under semiformal conditions, in an antechamber to the private apartments of the princess. It was neither a completely informal tete-a-tete, nor a completely formal state audience. Curious as any young girl, the princess merely wanted to talk to me and ask me questions.

She wore a simple robe of some light, clinging white stuff that reminded me of samite, and she sat on a raised cushion, feet curled under her like a child. I was sweating and uncomfortable in the stiff brocades tradition required of one on such an occasion; and, from time to time, irked by the weight of gem-studded cuff-bands and the constriction of a high, tight collar stiffened with gold wire, I twitched about, red-faced and suffering. From the bland expression on her flowerlike face and the scarcely concealed flash of mischief in her great eyes, I suspect the girl took an impish relish in my obvious discomfiture.

I felt far more comfortable the next day, when, dressed in warrior’s harness, I accompanied her on a riding expedition. The elf-knights of Phaolon wear begemmed and plumed garments, as I have already described; such fancy dress might make them look suitable for a road show production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, but the gaudy costumes are hardly fit for fighting in. Fortunately, Chong’s era lay in simpler times, and it was the shrewd notion of the princess that I would feel more at home in the simple scale tunic, swash-topped boots, plate girdle, and cloak of my own epoch. Actually, I still felt rather like a fugitive from a masquerade ball, but the simpler harness of Chong’s period was less confining, less ornate and ridiculous, and afforded me greater ease of movement.

“Riding” on the World of the Green Star is a less-than-accurate term. Since the Laonese dwell in tree-cities far above the ground, and shun the land surface due to the terrible predators that prowl the floor of the continent-sized forests, their steed of choice is winged rather than hooved. I was somewhat timorous of mounting these fantastical flying coursers, due as much to my inexperience in the saddle as to a natural reluctance to swooping giddily through the air astride nothing more substantial than an enormous butterfly. But there was no hope for it, and a royal invitation is the same as a royal command. And it ill-befitted the national hero of Phaolon to admit he was afraid of heights!

The princess rode in a floating bubble drawn by immense moths called dhua. These fantastic creatures had long tubular bodies the size of Terrene crocodiles, but banded with topaz dusted with powdered diamond, their heads great featureless casques of glistening black horn with huge compound eyes like faceted sapphires, and dainty antennae of scarlet, knobbed at the tip with puffballs of velvet. They were weird and exquisite and looked horribly frail to support such weight as human bodies; but then, at a flick of the reins, they unfolded colossal satiny wings of gorgeous emerald and sunset crimson, wings as huge as yacht sails!

The chariot in which the princess rode was a thin fluted shell of glossy pearl drawn by a team of matched dhua. The knights of her entourage and myself were saddled upon the backs of the titanic moths. These saddles were like highchairs, with back supports and high pommels, fashioned of scarlet lizard-hide stretched tightly over weightless wicker frames. We were seated well forward of the immense gauzy wings, directly behind the glistening ovoid beads of our fantastical steeds, and, much to my relief, we were belted securely to the saddles by safety straps so that it was all but impossible to fall out.

To limber up the lax, long-unused muscles of this new body of mine, I had long since formed the habit of working out with Panthon and the other warriors in my service every afternoon, following the conclusion of each language lesson. I had practiced with broadsword and buckler, bow and javelin, until my muscle tone was restored and my body glowed with health and vigor.

Employing these antique weapons with which, of course, I had never been familiar, I had noticed an odd phenomenon. That is, while I was not conscious of any familiarity in swordsmanship or archery, the thews and sinews of my body seemed somehow to “know” these weapons and without even thinking about it I blocked the blows of my friendly opponents and dealt them a few shrewd strokes of my own.

It was as if the use of the Laonese weapons had been so deeply ingrained in the habit patterns of the former resident of this flesh, that when I permitted my body to respond automatically to an exercise duel, my very muscles somehow “remembered” their facilities of old. I suppose this is not so remarkable as it seemed to me at the time; after all, the brain of Chong the Mighty still lived, although his conscious mind had been replaced by my own. Still, it was an uncanny sensation, feeling your limbs react to habit patterns your consciousness knew nothing of!

The same strange feeling of unconscious familiarity took possession of me from the moment I was strapped into the high saddle of my dhua. Chong had flown these fantastical creatures a thousand times, and his body knew to a nicety each delicate flick or tension of the reins, and how to guide the graceful courser of the air in flight. After a brief initial awkwardness, I relaxed, and let my body guide the dhua on its winged way.

We floated through a gold and emerald twilight world of leafy shadows and shafts of shining sunlight. About us in every direction stretched hazy distances of bough and blossom. The air had a crisp, cool tang; the weightlessness of flight was exhilarating; we soared and swooped and floated with the effortless ease of a child’s dream of magic flight. I felt like an elf-knight accompanying Titania on a fairy quest …

The occasion was an annual event in the court calendar. Once each year the gorgeous gigantic dragonflies the Laonese call zaiph vie to mate with their winged queen. The mating ritual is called “The Dance of the Zaiph,” and it was in truth weird and wondrous, beautiful and strange beyond the reach of words.

The queen was an immense golden thing of shimmering loveliness, twice again the size of the glittering males that strove to win her favors. Elfin huntsmen in velvet green with feathered caps had caged her, awaiting our arrival to release the royal beauty. All about, on the immense branches, male zaiph hovered, trilling their unearthly serenade.

As Niamh floated near in her airy chariot, and gave the signal with a gesture of her dainty silver riding whip, the cage flew open and the gorgeous queen spread wings of sheeted opal and launched her golden flash toward the heavens. In the next instant, half a hundred dragon swains shot from their perches, whirling aloft in a glitter of metallic splendor. We of the court sounded crystal hunting horns and soared to match the ascent of the spiral horde that whirled skyward in a trail behind the golden queen.

The splendid chase was an experience no Terrene hunt could match for exquisite thrill or intoxicating beauty. We rode up vast sunshafts of incandescent jade, through clouds of golden leaves, on the traces of soaring dragonflies as huge as stallions. The wind sang about us, whipping our cloaks like wings. The enormous vans of our moth-steeds floated like sails of fantastic tapestry. Leaves like sheeted foil swept past us: then we were above the branches in a misty void of opal vapor that fell away to the world’s edge.

Far, far aloft, pinned to the dim emerald star like a winged brooch of flashing gold, the queen hung, outpacing all her suitors save one splendid tawny-crimson brute whose head was a horned helm of blazing amethyst. As we soared below their skyey height they circled each other—then clung, mating in sunshot ecstasy, like brilliant gods. In the moment of their orgasm, their opal vans froze motionless. Locked in dual embrace they fell from that jade eminence, blazing like meteors down the vapory sky; fell flaming from our sight, dwindling below amidst the leafage of the worldtall trees.

I floated beside Niamh’s chariot. Her face was flushed with the thrill of the chase, eyes aflame with rapture. And in that moment our eyes looked deep into each other’s, and her virginal soul was naked to my gaze.

An instant only; then silken lashes veiled the maiden candor of her joy and her heart-shaped face flushed crimson.

But in that instant, I loved her, and she knew it.

Chapter 8 SWORD AGAINST DRAGON

The chase done, we dismounted on the branch of a nearby tree for a sort of court picnic.

The giant trees of the World of the Green Star are unbelievable in height and girth. In comparison, men and women shrink to mote-size, like ants next to skyscrapers. The main branches of these forest colossuses are broader than twelve-lane highways and sturdy enough to support entire cities. The branches whereat we paused for our midday meal, however, were less huge—say, of the width of ordinary streets.

Our perch was not really precarious. The branches are gnarled and whorled and knotted, their sheaths of bark rough and coarse as broken rock face. One would have to be amazingly clumsy to slip or fall—and the Laonese are nimble as mountain goats, utterly unafraid of heights, with a superb sense of balance.

All about us hung leaves the size of tents, lucently golden like vast sheets of antique parchment; emerald shafts of sun, striking down through filtering layers of leafage, drowned us in a dreamy haze of green-gold twilight.

While grooms tethered our dhua to twigs, domestics unpacked delectable food and drink from saddlebags. The lunch was a picnic sort of thing, of zesty, spicy oddments—narrow crusty cakes savory of almond paste, tiny cubes like anchovy sandwiches, slices and crisps of pickled fruit—all washed down with a foamy, effervescent drink that had the dry sparkle of champagne and the robust heartiness of dark beer.

We ate, clustered apart in couples and trios, scattered here and there about the branch. I had been favored with the honor of riding with the princess during the Dance of the Zaiph, now another was favored as her luncheon companion: a languid, lisping youth of ancient lineage and high rank named Awaiiomna, whom I particularly detested. The slender, elfin Laonese males are generally graceful and effeminate, but this particular princeling was foppish, limp-wristed and catty to a fault.

He and the princess retired to an upper curve of the bough, accompanied by Niamh’s maid; half-hidden from us by a screen of lucent gold leaves, I could not watch them with a jealous eye, as I longed to—I could only sit, seething, straining my ears to catch Awaiiomna’s sly whispers, and boiling with rude fury at Niamh’s frequent bursts of tinkling laughter.

My own luncheon companion was the High Bonze Eloigam, a dour priest whose conversation consisted of enigmatic homilies spiced with obscure texts from the Laonese scriptures. I understood hardly a word he said, and the grunts and nods and growls I gave in answer to his attempts at conversation must have been equally uninformative.

The High Bonze, it seemed, had been literally aching to get my ear, for he had a thousand and one queries of philosophic or metaphysical nature to try on me. In retrospect, I can sympathize with the crusty old cleric, for, after all, as one who had certainly passed through the portals of life and death and rebirth, I must have been a tempting potential source of enlightenment on the nature of the gods, the astral terrain of the World Above, and all the more arcane secrets of super-nature.

“The World Above,” incidentally, is the name the Laonese give their conception of heaven. I suppose it is only natural for the theological speculations of a cloud-wrapped planet to situate the country of the gods beyond the eternal cloudbanks; thus, at any rate, was the Laonese theory. I have never bothered to look very deeply into the native religion, a subject of great complexity at best, with endless pantheons of divinities, their various aspects and avatars, their multiplex natures each enshrined in a separate configuration, wrapped in its own apocalypse. Between the ultimate godhead and ordinary man, as well, are rank upon rank of saints and sages, prophets and miracle workers, angels and apsaras (a sort of Laonese version of valkyries), symbolic monsters, tutelary spirits, ancestral and clannish totem beasts, nature elementals, and guardian genies. The subject is worth a lifetime of study, for one so inclined.

At any rate, in my surly mood, I was struggling to make what answer I could to the probing questions of the High Bonze, coping as best I could with a spotty vocabulary unsuited to dealing with the higher matters of theologies, when a startling shriek of terror interrupted the meal and shattered the leafy tranquility of the idyllic scene.

It was Niamh’s voice!

Once again, the trained reflexes of my warrior’s body functioned automatically, bringing me to my feet in a lithe surge of rippling thews. Snatching my sword from its shoulder baldric, I nimbly sprang up the ascending coil of the branch, past lunching couples and trios frozen in sudden shock.

I shouldered through the screen of golden leaves to see a tableau of ultimate horror.

Niamh stood against a twig-stem the width of a sapling, luminous amber eyes dark and enormous against the pallor of her drawn visage. At her feet, cowering like a terror-stricken child, crouched the trembling highborn youth who had been her companion. He was gibbering in fright, mouth wet and working, hands futilely pawing at empty air as if to push from sight the monster that menaced them.

It was a ythid, the most fearsome carnivore of the World of the Green Star. Imagine a scarlet reptile twice the length of a full-grown tiger, with a sawtooth spine and lashing barbed tail, and you will have a picture of the thing.

With three pairs of sucker-disked claws, it clung to the up-curve of the dwindling bough. It glared down at the two helpless victims, mindless ferocity in its burning green eyes. The hooked snout snuffed the air, scarlet jaws parting to reveal a double row of fangs like curved daggers.

As I watched, the tree dragon glided toward its quarry, crouching on its six legs for the pounce.

No one else was near enough to help; my sword glittered naked in my hand: it was up to me!

Silence stretched taut to the breaking point. Steely sinews writhed and bunched in the sextuple shoulders, as the monstrous ythid gathered itself to leap upon the two.

The sword in my hand was a toy, a mere rapier with a slim blade of that strange, supple glass-clear metal the Laonese use instead of ferrous ore. Now I had cause to bitterly regret laying aside my mighty broadsword before departure, thinking it too heavy and cumbersome for the chase.

But—glittering toy or not—the sword was all I had. And it would have to do.

I hurled myself in the path of the ythid, splitting the silence with a deafening bellow!

My glass blade flashed and twinkled, slicing the air as I flicked the razory length across the hooked snout of the crouching reptile. Yellow gore spurted: the ythid recoiled with a squeal of surprise and anguish loud as a steam whistle.

I sprang to one side as it extended its long neck, snapping viciously at empty air where I had been a split second before. Whirling like a dancer, I slashed at the scarlet-mailed shoulder nearest me; again yellow blood squirted from the cut.

It gave voice to an ear-splitting screech and clawed at me, striking with blurring speed. I leaped back as hooked claws ripped open my leather tunic from throat to groin, merely grazing my flesh. Perspiration popped out on my brow; one good stroke of those keen sharp claws would disembowel me in an instant.

Fighting by pure instinct, I cut down at the extended paw, and caught it a shrewd blow at the wrist joint. Again, gore splashed from the wound-glistening, oily dragon blood, curiously yellow, like molten topaz.

Suddenly the thing reared up, using its terminal limbs to hold it secure to the curve of the bough. I swung at a scarlet forepaw—missed—drew back for another try and felt an iron grip crush my midsection!

One of the middle limbs had caught me in its grasp, hooked claws tightening like a vise.

The squalling brute jerked me off my feet and up into the air. The crushing pressure of those closing claws was driving the air from me; my face blackened; I gasped for breath.

The grinning saurian jaws swung down toward me, hideous fangs glistening wetly, eyes mad with pain and blood-lust. The foul breath of the thing blew like a hot, moist, fetid wind directly in my face. The stench of the dragon’s breath was sickening.

My lungs ached for air; my gaze dimmed in a swimming blur; as my strength ebbed, I cut again and again at the wrist that held me, hacking through sinew and tendon and tough scaly hide. Yellow gore splattered me. Death was near. I fought on.

The eyes of the ythid stared directly into mine, vast empty orbs of soulless green flame, burning with cold lust. In another second those drooling jaws would close about me with a sickening crunch, snuffing out my life. Would I die, then, go drifting down into darkness? Or would my far-wandering spirit drift Earthward down the stairways, leaving the World of the Green Star behind, lost in the star-gemmed infinity of space?

Then one glaring green lamp of an eye was extinguished!

From nowhere a black feathered arrow appeared, thrumming in the center of the ruined orb, which dissolved, leaking slow, gelatinous tears of tawny gore.

The ythid screamed, rearing at the intolerable pain!

The barbed arrow must have pierced the eye itself, probing like a flaming brand into the very brain.

The scarlet tree dragon convulsed, lashing out in its agony until the whole branch quivered.

As it convulsed in agony, the ythid opened its claws, which were slowly crushing the life out of me. The claws sprung wide—the beast dropped me. I bounced, rolled, clutched the rough bark, and clung to the branch. It whipped wildly, as the scarlet dragon threshed in the madness of its death agony.

My sight dimmed, lungs panting, gasping, as I drank deep of fresh, tangy air. Staring around, I saw my faithful Panthon at the base of the branch, lifting his bow to loose a second black feathered shaft at the flopping, squalling ythid.

It sank to the feather in the brute’s gullet as the jaws strained open for another screech. The second barbed arrow must have transfixed the dragon brain, for it convulsed as if touched by the lash of lightning.

Alas, Panthon! In your fervor to save me from the jaws of the ythid, you wrought another, no less fearful, doom!

For, as the dying brute convulsed in its death spasm, the spike-tipped tail lashed out, curling about the twig to which my beloved princess clung in a paralysis of fear.

It snapped, and she fell from the thrumming branch with one sharp, despairing cry that pierced my heart.

Exhausted, gasping breath into my starved limbs, my sword fallen from my hands, smeared from top to toe with yellow dragon gore, I was a sorry portrait of a dragon battling hero at that moment.

But I did not pause to think. I saw her fall, vanishing from sight in a twinkling, and the pang went through me, numbing my brain with calamity. One quick glimpse of her white face and wide, frightened eyes—one quick cry of despair—and the woman I loved was gone from me.

Staggering to my feet, I cried out her name. And then I hurled myself from the branch, and fell like a stone into the dim, world-deep abyss of leafy gloom—

Chapter 9 CAUGHT IN THE WEB

Probably everyone has experienced the nightmare of falling endlessly. Usually the dream breaks just before the moment of impact—just before flesh pulps, brain matter squirts from shattered skull, and limbs break sickeningly.

That dream of horror I lived now. Falling … falling … down and down … vast branches whirling past me … canopy of gold-tissue leaves whipping by … shadowy gulf of doom yawning beneath me as I hurtled into the giddy abyss.

What lent an exquisite frisson to the nightmare was that I could actually see my princess beneath me, like a falling flower, bright chase-tunic fluttering tulip-yellow, carnation-red.

She was far beneath, me, turning head over heels in a tumble of bare ivory limbs and a blur of spun-silver hair.

I knew we would not live to suffer the hideous death of hurtling down to shatter against the monster roots at the bottom of the gulf. Already I was panting for breath, the rapidly accelerating speed of my fall whipping the air past mouth and nostrils too swift for me to breathe. I had read of those who fall from great heights, and I knew their death was swift and merciful—from suffocation. They did not live to feel the impact as flesh mangled against sharp stones below. And the branch from which she had been flung—the branch from which I had sprung after her—must have been three miles or more aloft.

We would be dead, both of us, long before we struck the ground.

My eyes watered in the hissing wind of my fall; vision blurred; I blinked.

And in the next instant, crashed into some unglimpsed obstacle with stunning force. And knew no more.

When I awoke I was bruised and numb and aching in every thew. Some strange constriction held me, and some strange pressure filled my head; my face felt hot and congested and I had a problem breathing. My heart labored within my breast.

I opened my eyes and stared straight downward into an abyss of gloom!

A moment of vertigo and madness seized me. Few experiences can be more nightmarish than awakening from a swoon to find yourself hanging upside down above a terrific gulf.

I steadied my nerves with an effort of will, forcing myself to unclench my squeezed tight eyes. I looked down again: the floor of the forest was a mile beneath me, lost in impenetrable darkness. Few and faint are the shafts of emerald sun that sink through the infinity of leaves to lighten the everlasting gloom of the surface of the weird world of Himalaya-tall trees.

But I did not see the pitiful, broken body of my love below me; so there was still hope.

In what was I entangled? It felt rather like a net. But something bound me tight—some constriction had caught and broken my fall. It was a wonder the impact of that collision had not been my death; nonetheless, I yet lived.

I craned and kicked and struggled about, and saw to my utter amazement that I was entangled in the torn, sticky meshes of a spiderweb!

True, the web must have measured five miles across—for such was the distance between the tree from which I had hurtled and its nearest neighbor—but it was a web, just the same.

My imagination quailed, flinching from a guess as to the size of the spider which had spun so unthinkable a web. Think of it yourself—a web longer than the Golden Gate Bridge!

The cables of the mesh nearest me were inches thick, spun of a gluey stuff yellowy-white in color. I could make out no texture or braiding to the strands: they were for all the world like nothing more than ropes of rubber cement—but half-a-hand thick, and miles in length!

The impact of my fall had torn the webwork mesh and the flexive, gluey cabling had stretched to the thrust—and it was this springy “give” that had broken my fall without breaking my bones.

The relief of knowing I was safe made me giddy—I laughed in hysteria. Safe—if you can call yourself safe, stuck in a Brobdingnagian spiderweb a mile in the sky!

Then, looking about, my heart leaped in a throat-stopping throb of joy. For there, a dozen yards away, dangling pale and limp, still unconscious was—Niamh!

She did not seem to be injured. She hung in her swoon, bright silver hair a silken banner rippling faintly in the breeze, her scarlet raiment torn and disarranged, revealing mellow glimpses of smooth thigh and sleek, soft shoulder. But, although unconscious, her shallow breasts rose and fell as she breathed and her silken eyelids fluttered as if stirring towards wakefulness.

Then it was that I sensed an ominous vibration moving down the taut cables of the web.

The spiders which haunt the worldwide forests of the Laonese planet are known as the xoph. I did not know this at the time, but learned the word later.

The pressure of our fall into its miles-wide web had aroused the monster from its mindless slumber.

Now, immense white furred legs feeling delicately along the strand, it blindly sought to ascertain our position. I held my breath in suspense, knowing that the slightest involuntary motion would communicate itself throughout the webwork.

Only the gods of the World Above knew how close—or how far away—the monster spider made its hideous lair. If it were akin to the arachnida of my own far-off world, it could be at the very center of the web, curled in a silken pocket, or at the extremity of the strands.

How near were we to the center?

It was impossible to say: in the green-gold gloom I could hardly see the soaring, dark vastness that was the next tree—but we were quite some distance from our own. The huge crawling thing might be half a mile distant—or several miles. It might take it but minutes to scuttle down the wobbling strand to where we dangled like fruit ripe for the picking—or hours!

I began to strive against my sticky bonds. If we could get loose now—if we could clamber down the strand to reach our tree in time—perhaps we could escape the attack of the loathsome xoph.

If not, then truly we were doomed. For I had lost my sword, and would have to fight the thing with my bare hands.

If we could not reach the nearest tree before the hideous thing was upon us, then our luck in landing amidst the great web was but a cruel jest of fate, who had thus spared us a quick, merciful death from suffocation to die slowly and horribly in the clutches of the gigantic xoph, which would drink our blood drop by drop, in slow, agonizing sips, through its horrible hollow fangs.

Niamh awoke from her swoon during my struggle to free myself from the gluey grip of the web.

One wide-eyed glance about her in terror, and the gallant-hearted girl summoned her courage and lay quietly watching me. Like all denizens of this world, she knew the dreaded xoph and the slow and ghastly death they bring their helpless victims. She knew that as I fought and tore against the constriction of my bonds I was signaling our position to the monstrous bloated thing that crouched listening somewhere not far off in the leafy whispering gloom.

Child of her strange and beautiful and savage world, she knew that we must fight against death, or wait supinely for the bitter kiss of the horrible hollow fangs.

For an interminable time, I struggled against the gluey substance that bound me. And all the while there came down the long cable-like strands of the web that distant tremor that announced the coming of the monster arachnid in whose net we lay entangled. With every moment that passed, the albino vampire came nearer—nearer!

I fought on: there was nothing else to do. If fate so willed, I would die still fighting to save the woman I loved from the slavering jaws that thirsted to drink her blood. It might well be that my fight would prove hopeless in the end; but I would face the judgment of whatever gods might be, without shame, my honor unstained, knowing that however I had failed, at least I had done my best.

No man can do more than his best.

At length I managed to extricate myself from the clinging web. And for this I owe thanks to the scarlet ythid loyal Panthon had slain with his arrow. For in my struggles with the tree dragon, my glass rapier had pierced its mailed hide again and again, drenching me from head to toe in reeking dragon blood.

The yellow gore stunk abominably, and I was so besmeared with the stuff that I resembled a refugee from battlefield or charnel house. But the oily liquid which stained my limbs resisted the adhesive properties of the sticky web and gave me more freedom of movement than I might otherwise have enjoyed.

Crawling free from the strands, I climbed along the web to where Niamh lay hopelessly entangled.

“Do not be afraid,” I said. “We still have a chance.”

The brave girl stared up at me. Her face was pale but self-composed, and her amber eyes shone with unquenched courage.

“I am not afraid,” she said, “for you are with me.”

I could think of no reply to this astounding testimony of faith, but inwardly I prayed to the grim gods that Niamh’s faith in me was not misplaced!

In its death convulsions, the ythid had not besplattered the princess with its gore. But the portions of the giant web which entangled her adhered more to her garments than to her flesh; thus, setting her free was a comparatively simple matter of tearing away most of what remained of her robes. It left her clad in garments whose brevity would not have pleased modesty or convention: but at least she was free.

“What can we do now?” she asked.

It was a dilemma. I did not care to linger here, awaiting the approach of the monstrous spider, for it would result in a hopeless struggle. I was unarmed, with nothing to pit against the ferocity of the xoph but sheer strength alone. And the iron vigor of my thews would prove a puny defense against the fanged jaws of the monster denizen of this colossal web.

Our only recourse seemed to be to flee along the web, hoping to reach the nearest tree before the brute was upon us. Luckily, this was a task far less difficult than it may sound to you. For while we were thousands of feet above the forest floor, the Laonese are racially immune to the vertigo that would have left all but the boldest adventurer of my distant planet helpless in a paralysis of giddy terror. And when I had inherited the body of Chong, I had inherited as well his cool nerve and the fearlessness for heights that was an attribute of his race.

As well, the cable strand along which we must travel was far thicker than you might think. While the web strands themselves were of thicknesses that varied from the width of a man’s finger to the width of his thigh, the great anchor cables that secured the web to the tree trunks were truly colossal, as big around as tree trunks on my own world, and so sticky there was very little problem of falling.

So we began to inch our way along the cable, going as swiftly as was humanly possible, but not so swiftly as we could have wished. For a strange chittering sounded from behind us, a dry, hollow sound, like the pattering of crisp leaves. And we looked over our shoulders into a face of frightful horror.

The huge spider had advanced stealthily upon us while I had been busied freeing Niamh—and in the next instant it was upon us in a rush, glittering eyes blazing soullessly into mine, horny mandibles clashing at my throat!

Chapter 10 IN THE GRIP OF THE XOPH

Even now my flesh creeps with horror as memory conjures up that moment of transcendent fright. I am sure I shall relive that nightmare battle on the mile-high web in my dreams for years to come.

Picture for yourself our predicament. We stood, insecurely perched on a spiderweb thousands of feet in the air. With every step—with every slightest motion—the taut cable strand swayed and trembled under our feet. Although the monstrous strand was as thick as a tree trunk, the slightest misstep could hurl us from our precarious perch to a horrible death amid the titanic roots far below us, lost in the impenetrable gloom of the forest floor.

And there, upon that giddy, swaying strand, we faced bare-handedly a monster so fearful and ferocious that I would willingly have challenged a pride of lions, armed only with a peashooter, if I but had a choice. Now did I truly have reason to regret the loss of my sword. It had been only a flimsy dress rapier, and not my mighty two-handed broadsword, but in such a predicament I would have felt myself fortunate to be armed even with a dagger.

As for the thing I faced and must fight, words alone cannot convey its frightfulness or ferocity. Imagine a spider grown to the proportions of an elephant and you will have only the faintest conception of the multi-legged horror that loomed before us.

The xoph was unspeakably repulsive and loathsome to the sight. Its cylindrical body was encased in a horny carapace of slimy, glistening chitin as tough as armorplate. This oily thorax terminated in the obscene bulge of its abdomen, which hung down beneath it, the egg sac hideously bloated and swollen. Like Terrene spiders, the xoph has eight jointed legs clad in greasy chitin, terminating in multiple claws; and it hung aloft on these towering skeletal limbs, glaring down upon us with eyes like clusters of black jewels—eyes aflame with cold ferocity and mindless lust.

The stench of the spider-thing was overpowering, a sickening reek of decay and corruption like an open sewer. But what made the xoph so loathsome was that it was snowy-white, a repulsive albino thing, its stalk-like legs and bloated belly shaggy with stinking white fur, besoiled with oily droppings.

Its face was a monstrous mask of indescribable horror. It bore not the slightest resemblance to the face of beast or man, bird or reptile. It was a shield-shaped casque of greasy chitin, lobed and crescentiform, rising to either side of the central mouth orifice in twin bosses or stubby horns. The eyes of the thing were completely inhuman, swollen structures of many-faced ebon crystal, glittering with blood-lust. And, instead of a mouth, the monster had a drooling slit which worked to and fro obscenely. From the corners of this repulsive orifice two jointed mandibles thrust clackingly at me—they were as large as the arms of a full-grown man, ending in curious multiplex claws which rubbed and rasped and clicked together in continuous motion.

It was in the grip of the dexter mandible that I was held, writhing helplessly. The chitinous claw resembled the pincers of a gigantic albino crab, with sawtoothed edges of durable horny stuff. The grip of the mandible was crushing and I feel certain that the pincers would have torn off my arm had it not been for the fortunate fact that the mandible had gripped me on the upper arm, just where I wore an armlet of heavy silver.

Niahm screamed in hopeless despair as the stinking thing pounced upon us with a rush, seizing me in its foremandible. I, too, felt a moment of sickening despair as the xoph tore me from the sticky web strand with a surge of irresistible strength. I hung there above the web, completely helpless in the crushing grip of the spider monster, dangling like a mouse from the jaws of a cat.

Had it been able to grasp me as well with its other foremandible, there is no slightest doubt in my mind but that the giant spider could have torn me in half with a a single flexing of its foreclaws. But as it was, the mandibles branched from either side of that awful, drooling, lipless slit of a mouth, and the width of this orifice was such that the second mandible could not easily get a grip on me, although it scissored with a horrible rasping click only inches from my legs, which swung to and fro as the albino spider-thing swung me about.

Ere long, giving up any further attempt to seize me with both mandibles, it brought the dexter mandible near that gruesomely slavering mouth slit. Within the fleshless maw I could see multiple-horned tusk-rows grinding. If once the monster spider had me in its bony jaws, my flesh would be mangled to pulp in an instant.

As it was, the nameless slime excreted from the working jaws dripped upon my thighs. I have no notion of what vicious acid or digestive chemical the xoph secretes, but the slobber which fell on my flesh stung like fury and the foul, stinking breath that blew from the triple-fanged inner maw was unspeakably vile.

I realized instantly what the monster spider was attempting to do. Luckily, it was only my left arm that was helplessly caught in the grip of the mandible, and right arm and both legs were free. Swinging my body up, I planted both booted feet against the horny helm of the spider’s face, one above and one below the hideous, slavering mouth orifice. Bracing myself, I resisted with all my strength the xoph’s attempt to cram me into its clashing jaws, now only inches from my flesh.

In all the annals of fantasy and romance, was ever a hero caught in such a hopeless predicament? I clung there, pushing with all the strength of my legs against the face of the monster, as it strove again and again to thrust me into the reach of those tusked and clashing jaws.

The steely strength of my thigh muscles was great—but how long could I stave off the irresistible ferocity of the giant spider? Surely, fight as best I could, I would in time reach the dregs of my strength, and as my vigor was exhausted, I would be forced into the clashing jaws to be mangled to ribbons.

There was no hope of rescue. I was unarmed—Niamh, as well, bore no weapon, and the frail strength of her slender body could do naught to assist me. Yet I fought on with grim, dogged determination, although I knew all too well that it was only a matter of time. Already the muscles of thigh and calf ached from the strain: if only I had some weapon, any weapon at all! For my right hand was free …

My right hand was free!

Without a moment’s hesitation, I balled my right hand into a fist and drove it smashing down like a hammer into the bulging complex eye nearest me!

The glittering faceted eye of the spider-thing was of some hard crystalline stuff, but like crystal it was also fragile. Sheer warrior instinct had led me to the discovery of the one fatal weakness of the chitin-armored xoph—the eyes!

In a trice I had hammered the monster’s left eye to crumpled ruin. The multiplex inner structure broke beneath my smashing blows like hard panes of wax in an immense honeycomb. A colorless, oily fluid leaked from the ruined eye of the giant spider.

I know not whether the albino monster was capable of feeling pain, but it uttered a high, thin piercing shriek. It shook its two-horned head like a maddened thing, all but dislodging me from where I clung. The mandible that held me helpless bore down with shearing force on my left arm, and I would have been crippled in an instant, had it not been for the arm-ring of heavy metal I wore clasped high about my biceps. As it was, the smooth silver of the ring grated and squealed under the pressure as the sawtoothed mandible crunched down in maddened fury on my arm.

Now I swung myself about, with some difficulty, striving to reach the many-faceted eye that bulged out like a swollen mass of black crystals on the other side of the monstrous horny head. But from the position in which I was held, the other eye was beyond my reach.

Risking all on a desperate gamble, I swung about. Bracing myself with but one foot against the mandible that strove to force me into the drooling maw, I drove the other booted foot crashing into the monster’s second eye!

It squealed in an ear-splitting shriek of fury as my heel crunched through the complex structure. The globular eye broke in a smear of oily ruin—

And the xoph, stung at last with stabbing pain, threshed to and fro in blind agony—

And dropped me!

I struck the thick anchor cable to which the spider clung and would have bounced from it, hurtling into the dim gloom-drowned abyss below, had it not been that the leather of my war harness clung to the adhesive cable.

Niamh was at my side in an instant, even as the adhesion of the cable was yielding to my weight. She caught my arm and half-lifted, half-dragged me to the topmost surface of the cable.

Thrusting her ahead of me, I staggered further out on the thick web strand. Behind us, the giant albino spider convulsed in maddened fury, furred legs thrusting, claws snapping at empty air, making the taut-stretched cable bounce and quiver to the frenzy of its convulsions.

We clambered away from the blinded thing with all possible speed, heading toward the nearer of the colossal trees, that soared above us like arboreal Everests.

“Will it follow us?” Niamh panted as she stumbled along the rise of the thrumming cable.

“Only the gods know that,” I said. “But let us put what distance between us that we can—while we can!”

We both knew the brute could sense our whereabouts by its sensitivity to the vibrations of our movement as we scrambled up the web strand. Our only hope lay in the pain I had perhaps inflicted on the white furred monster. In its agony, it might not think to pursue us for some time—perhaps long enough for us to reach a more secure shelter among the boughs of the forest giant that rose before us like a tremendous wall of bark.

It took the two of us the better part of an hour to reach the crotch of one colossal branch, and whatever the reason, the monster xoph did not follow us up the great strand to where it was anchored to the tree.

The cable rose ever more steeply, like one of the support cables of a huge suspension bridge on my native world. Toward the last we were climbing with great difficulty up an almost vertical incline, and had it not been for the sticky goo wherewith the cable was surfaced, the feat would have been much more dangerous and difficult than it actually was.

But, after an interminable climb, we reached at last the safety of the crotch of a branch as broad as Times Square, and flung ourselves down, weary and trembling with exhaustion, faint from our exertions, but safe enough for a time.

But we were hopelessly lost—alone, unarmed, and helpless—in a strange world of shadowy terrors and numberless monsters against whose attack we had not the slightest means of defense.

And night was falling across the World of the Green Star.