“Think you I am a fool, O Jandar of Tellus?” he said softly. “Think you I came here to explain everything, to put myself into your power, without a means of escape? I am not a fool, Earthling; nay, ‘tis you who art the fool. You should thrust home with that clumsy sword, and speak after. Now it is too late.”
And then a thunderbolt struck me directly between the eyes and I fell forward into a sea of black gloom.
Agony lanced through my skull as I swam groggily back to consciousness again. I could feel the gritty stone flags against my cheek, and the dank odor of musty straw was heavy in my nostrils.
Blearily I opened my eyes and strove to see what was happening.
Behind me, Koja and Lukor lay crumpled on the stone pave. Ool had struck them down even as I had been felled by his mental bolt. The power to read and to manipulate minds must include with it the strange and awful skill to employ the mind as a weapon. Ool’s trained mind was able to project a stunning mental blow before which any lesser mind was helpless.
Why, then, had my own unconsciousness been but a momentary thing? Why did I rouse to wakefulness, while Lukor and Koja lay sprawled in the grip of an eerie mental paralysis?
Perhaps the answer lay in my own nature. I was not native to this jungle moon of Thanator; my body, my brain, had evolved upon a far-off planet. The bolt of mental force which the fat little Mind Wizard of Kuur had projected had stunned, but had not thrust me down into full unconsciousness. Perhaps the intensity of that stunning bolt had been attuned to the frequency of minds native to Thanator. Perhaps Ool the Uncanny had, for a moment, forgotten my extra-Thanatorian origin. It was a small thing to forget―doubtless, it had seemed of no great importance. But it seemed, after all, that the fate of a world hung on that little error he had committed in his complacence.
I resolved that he would feel the full weight of that error now!
Springing to my feet, snatching up the cutlass where it had fallen from my hand as I fell, I faced Ool, who had been bending over Lukor and who now started around with amazement written all over his placid, buttery features.
My brain throbbed abominably―I had the great-grandfather of all headaches―but I grimly thrust the consciousness of pain from me and sprang upon him, sword in hand.
From under his voluminous robes, Ool drew a rapier. So he was armed after all! His pretense at being unarmed was just another deception―just one more lie. It would benefit him little: I had learned the art of the blade from Lukor himself, and he was one of the greatest masters of that art on all Thanator. The fat little man could not long stand against my flashing steel, and now he knew his mental bolts had but a momentary and passing influence on my alien intelligence.
We fought without words, the little Mind Wizard and I, with no one to watch. Our only audience consisted of a dead man and two unconscious warriors.
It was a strange duel. In many ways, it was the strangest battle that I have ever fought.
Ool knew hardly anything of swordplay; his soft, plump hands were not accustomed to the grip of a sword hilt. Nor was he used to violent physical exercise. In no time his fat jowls and bald brow glistened with the sheen of perspiration and his breath came in panting gasps and his arms trembled from weariness and exertion.
But Ool could read my mind, and he knew in advance where I would direct every thrust and stroke―and his blade was there ahead of me!
It was an odd sensation. In a way it was like fighting yourself, like battling against a mirror image, pitting your blade against an adversary who knew precisely it! every move you would make even before you made
A cold horror gripped me. I had faced powerful swordsmen ere now; it was absurd to feel qualms of dread, crossing steel with this fat, puffing little priest. But so much depended on the outcome of this duel that my mind was a dizzy turmoil of fear and tension. Koja and Lukor lay helpless, mentally paralyzed by the bolt of uncanny mind force: if Ool slew me, my helpless friends would follow me down to Death’s amazing kingdom. The woman I loved would be forced into the arms of a sneering coward, the gallant warriors of Lord Yarrak would walk directly into a trap, the small, peaceful kingdoms and cities of Thanator, cities I had never seen, would fall to the cunning of the Mind Wizards―a world lay helplessly in bondage if I were slain!
I wonder if ever before, in all the history of Thanator or of any other world, so much rested on the outcome of a single duel. The fate of a world, the destiny of many nations, depended on my quick thinking, steady hand, and flashing sword!
I tried to fence automatically, without conscious thought, relying on the sheer force of training and instinct alone, hoping in that way to overcome the advantage Ool’s unearthly mind power had over me. Alas, it was in vain: whatever the nature and extent of his telepathic skills, he continued to anticipate, by a fraction of a second, my every thrust, parry, and stroke.
Perhaps his mental probe went deeper than I even guessed. Perhaps he could read me clear to the depths of my unconscious and could scrutinize those fighting instincts, those trained responses, on which I now relied. Perhaps he was alert to those tiny triggering impulses of nervous energy as they set into action the twitching of my muscles, long ere those muscles moved in actuality. I know not. I only know that wherever my point flashed, the flat of his blade was there.
Only the Lords of Cordrimator know what would have been the eventual outcome of this weird battle of strength and steel against mind magic.
Perhaps my very superior endurance would have won out in the end, or perhaps Ool’s strange powers would have gained the ascendancy hi the duel, and he would have struck at me, using some tactic of advanced swordsmanship drawn from my own brain to strike me down.
At any rate, it was not my hand that slew him, but the hand of a dead man that struck his doom.
As I advanced, plying my blade in a glittering dance of death, the little wizard retreated, shuffling along backwards. Around the huge square stone chamber we went … and then the hand of Fate struck.
The corpse of Bluto lay where I had struck it down. A puddle of cooling gore splashed the rushes. His dead limbs lay asprawl, and as Ool shuffled backwards, retreating from my point, he struck the dead hand of Bluto with one foot, staggered off balance, and fell over backwards, striking his bald pate on the cold stone pave.
His skull split like a ripe melon … and thus the weird duel of sword skill against mind magic came to an end, and death came to Ool the Uncanny at the hand of a corpse!
BOOK FIVE
THE BOOK OF DARLOONA
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
THE FALL OF HOOM
As Valkar sprang down the steps of the high altar and drew back his arm to plunge his blade directly into the back of the robed and hooded little wizard-priest, Ool turned and looked him full in the face, and Valkar gasped, and paled, and his blade went wavering to one side.
“Jandar!” he cried in astonishment.
Was it relief―or joy―or amazement―that flared in the emerald eyes of Darloona?
“Jandar―?” she echoed wonderingly.
At her side, Prince Vaspian blanched, and turned an incredulous gaze on the hooded figure who stood a few steps above him.
“Jandar!” he gasped bewilderedly.
I laughed and threw back my hood, tossing the heavy robes aside, and stood above them, grinning with reckless humor, the heavy cutlass in my hand.
For, of course, it was I who had emerged from the far side of the Hall of Hoom, muffled in the thick robes I had taken from the corpse of Ool the Uncanny who lay dead in the Pits of Shondakor. Hunched over so that I seemed no taller than the fat little Mind Wizard, shuffling along in imitation of his waddling stride, I had gained a place close to Darloona without a single person in all that mighty hall guessing my identity. But the rasp of Valkar’s buskin against the stone step had made me turn―just in time to let him see and recognize my face under the shadowing cowl, and turn his blade aside before it drank my heart’s blood.