“Valkar! What has happened!” I cried as my comrades gathered about us and Lukor knelt to set a cup of water from his canteen at the white lips of our injured friend.
His eyelids flickered and a trace of color came into his marble cheeks.
“Jandar,” he whispered hoarsely, and in so faint a voice that I had to bend low to catch his next words.
“They sprang on me … from behind … three of them I … slew … but there were … too many,” he whispered feebly.
“And the Princess?” I cried in an agony of suspense. “What of the Princess? What of Darloona?”
“Seized … taken,” he whispered, and then he spoke no more. The effort had drained what small reserves of energy his body retained, and he fell back in my arms unconscious, although not seriously injured.
“Taken!” Lord Yarrak repeated, horror written upon his stern and kingly features.
“But by whom?” Lukor asked, rendering vocal the question that throbbed in the hearts of each of us.
And then the answer came―in a woman’s cry!
“Jandar! O Jandar!” came a faint, far voice. A voice that I knew. A voice that brought me swiftly to my feet, the sword ready in my hands.
“Darloona? Where are you?” I shouted, and the answer came, faintly as if from afar, “Here!”
And then I turned, and looked up, and saw her.
Her eyes looked longingly into mine; her warm lips were opened in a tremulous smile and her arms reached out as if to clasp me. My heart leapt within me, and her next words―the last words I was to hear from her lips―echo within me to this very hour, and shall remain in my memory so long as life endures: never had I dared to hope that I should hear her speak those words to me, and that I have heard them from her very lips is a precious memory which I shall shore up against whatever empty, lonely years of bitterness and despair lay ahead for me.
“O Jandar, my beloved, my gallant warrior―I love you! I love you! I shall love you until I die―”
A thunderous burst of emotion shook me to the core and rose to overpower me. I stood speechless, heart-shaken, basking in the glory of it―that my own hopeless and unspoken love was returned by my peerless and incomparable princess! She loved me!
My heart was too full for speech. But my eyes gazed deep into her own, and I doubt not that the eloquence of my gaze of longing and adoration communicated my feelings to her heart.
It was a magic moment, but already she was receding from me, her face dwindling, a pallid oval against the deepening dusk.
I stared after her, heartbreak and longing written on my anguished features. For as long as we remained within sight of each other, we continued to gaze deep into each other’s eyes.
But it was not very long.
For, locked a helpless captive in the clutches of Prince Thuton, who grinned down at me with cold gloating triumph written in his, cruel face, Darloona was swiftly borne away from me as she stood on the deck of the Kajazell, the flagship of the Zanadarian fleet, which rose from hovering above the terrace of the palace, circled us briefly once, and then rose again to fly at a vast height, dwindling down the sky, bound for Zanadar, the mountaintop fortress of the bold and powerful Sky Pirates of Callisto.