At the head of this table I sat, as Prince of the Golden City. To my right sat Zamara, Princess of Tharkol, and to my left, the gross bulk of Kaamurath, Seraan of Soraba. At lower places about the table sat the lords and chieftains and courtiers of the Ku Thad realm―handsome and courageous Prince Valkar, majestic Lord Yarrak, the solemn-eyed arthropod Koja, and Lukor of Ganatol, and many another brave and stalwart ally, not the least among them, in our reverence and esteem, being the aged and silver-haired Zastro, the sage and philosopher of the Shondakorian realm.
Only my princess was absent from our council, but the voice of motherhood has a higher call at times than do the demands of statecraft. And our infant son, but newly born, loudly and insistently required her presence more needfully than did we.
For months we had labored, three cities in concord, to mount the greatest expedition of war ever launched across the face of this world―or, at least, the greatest known to our annals.
Since the destruction of the Sky Pirates of Zanadar, Shondakor alone of all the cities of the Jungle Moon possessed a fleet of the fantastic flying galleons wherewith the cruel corsairs of the City in the Clouds had long harassed the other kingdoms of Thanator. From our successful battle against Zanadar we had borne away two of the mighty ornithopters, the Jalathadar and the Xaxar.
But in the interval since the fall of Zanadar, and all unknown to us, the cunning Mind Wizards had moved in secret to arm the warlike Tharkolians with the flying ships―a secret weapon with which the self-styled Empress Zamara had planned the conquest of Thanator, never dreaming that she was but a tool in the hands of the Mind Wizards.
To Zamara’s able craftsmen and artisans, the agent of the Mind Wizards, Ang Chan, had delivered the secret formulae and techniques whereby the amazing sky warships were built and rendered weightless. Carefully working in secret, the Tharkolians had completed two such aerial contrivances, which they had christened Empress and Conqueress. These two galleons of the clouds were the prototypes of a yet mightier number that would, it had been planned, form the greatest sky navy in the history of the planet, and which would subjugate the many kingdoms of Thanator to the rule of Zamara.
In the months since we had defeated the imperial ambitions of Ang Chan of Kuur and had won the contrite Zamara of Tharkol to our side, we of the Three Cities had labored tirelessly to prepare for the great expedition against the secret citadel of the Mind Wizards.
The bravest warriors, the noblest fighting-men, the most skillful archers and swordsmen of three kingdoms had trained unwearyingly for their duties aboard the combined fleets of Shondakor and Tharkol. The finest intellects in three realms had pooled their wisdom to our aid; cartographers and scholars, geographers and explorers, had combined efforts to scrape together what few morsels of information or rumor, legend or hearsay, could be found concerning the unknown far side of the planet. The finest maps, the most detailed and reliable charts, had been compiled. They were the end result of months of discussion and research, the sifting of evidence and the comparison of knowledge. But these charts fell pitifully short of accuracy or detail. If we entered the skies of the unknown far side of Thanator armed only with these charts, we should be flying blind into an unknown and mysterious world. We might well consume months―years―in combing many thousands of square miles, in search of our uncharted destination.
At the culmination of a lengthy series of meetings, the final discovery came to light. During these councils we had painstakingly gathered together every minuscule scrap of data we possessed concerning the Mind Wizards. I had racked my brains for every tiniest bit of information I had learned from my brief association with Ool during my incognito tour of duty among the warriors of the Black Legion, and I had ransacked my memory to reconstruct, as accurately as possible, every word he had ever spoken in my hearing.
Princess Zamara did precisely the same, setting down for the scribes to copy out everything she knew or remembered about Ang Chan, and striving to recall every word, the text of every single conversation she had ever had with the yellow dwarf. We combed over this accumulation of material, searching for clues, but found little that was of any use to us.
As well, we examined minutely the contents of Ang Chan’s suite back in Tharkol, fetched hither in the Empress. I don’t know precisely what we had hoped to find―perhaps a letter, a map, a book, some kind of document that might indicate the location of the hidden lair of the Mind Wizards.
And then I recalled the curiously-inscribed disc Ergon had taken from about the neck of Ang Chan as he lay dying in the cabin of Zamara’s flying ship. At the time I had slipped this item into my pouch, vaguely planning to examine it later, which was something I had completely forgotten to do in the interim. The pouch still lay in a cupboard in my dressing room. I sent a servant to find it and displayed the thing before the council.
It was a smallish disc of some heavy, slick metal resembling silver. One side was smooth and blank, but the other was engraved with an odd design or pattern of curved and wavy lines which made no particular sense to me. It looked like this:
We passed the small silver medallion around the table, examining it one by one. No one could make anything in particular of it, until it came into the hands of wise old Zastro. He peered at it thoughtfully, then called for the document in which I had caused to be transcribed the several passages of dialogue which had passed between Ool and myself during the time I had served (under a false name) in the retinue of Prince Vaspian of the Black Legion. He slowly read aloud that particular information concerning the location of Kuur which Ool had let slip during our battle in the Pits.
When he raised his lined and weary face, his eyes gleamed bright with youthful zest and excitement.
“Do you not grasp the meaning of it, my lords?” he inquired.
Gallant old Lukor sniffed impatiently.
“I, for one, do not, friend Zastro,” he said. “‘Tis but a bauble, scribbled with a meaningless design, to my way o’ thinking!”
“Then why should he wear it concealed in the bosom of his garments?” Zastro asked, gently.
Lukor wrinkled up his brow.
“Mayhap because it was precious to him―how can we guess?”
Zastro nodded slowly, silver beard gleaming in the shafts of brilliant day which fell athwart the table through tall windows.
“And perhaps we can guess why it was so valuable to him,” he said. “We may assume that this Ang Chan was not intended to remain forever at the court of Tharkol, but would eventually, once his mission was concluded, have made his way back to his unknown homeland. Exactly how he would have effected this journey I cannot guess―nor does it particularly matter. But it seems to me that he would have had to keep about him, against that moment of need, some way of telling how to get home again across half the world. Is this not reasonable to expect?”
We all nodded or murmured acquiescence. Koja eyed the old sage with his solemn and inscrutable gaze.
“Are we to assume that you profess to see a map of some kind in the scribble on the reverse of the medallion?” he inquired in his harsh monotone.
The old man smiled gently.
“That is precisely the case!” he said. “Consider―Ang Chan could not have known precisely when it would become necessary for him to make his return journey. His return might have waited upon the successful termination of his mission, or it might have come about quite suddenly―for example, if his identity had unexpectedly been exposed.”
“There is sense in what you say, Zastro; speak on,” Lord Yarrak bade, his eyes alive with keen interest.