“He might have been many leagues distant from his suite in the palace, absent from Tharkol on a mission for his queen, when the time for return came. Thus, would it not be reasonable for us to expect he would keep somewhere about his person at all times the means whereby to find his path back across half a world to shadowy and hidden Kuur? Now, for a man to keep a book about his person, or a pouch of papers, much less a folded parchment map, would be to arouse suspicions in all he met and to risk the loss of the return-chart in any one of a thousand ways.”
“Such as?” Zamara asked skeptically.
“Why, such as theft. A thief, brushing against him in the street―a burglar, robbing his apartment while he bathed―a fire breaking out suddenly, making it impossible for him to escape with aught but his life. But suppose, foreseeing these eventualities, he caused a miniature map to be engraved upon a bit of ordinary jewelry which he could wear upon his person at every moment of the day or night, waking or sleeping …”
“You mean―the medallion?” I said.
He nodded, smilingly, then traced with a careful hand a replica of the seemingly meaningless tangle of curved lines on a large sheet of blank parchment, and held it up for the rest of us to see.
“Now, observe this long line that threads its curving way through the midst of the design,” he said, indicating it with his forefinger. “Prince Jandar has told us that Ool the Uncanny mentioned that the lair of the Mind Wizards was `beyond the Dragon River.’ This line in particular catches my attention, not only because the small triangular mark is situated just beyond it, but because it is unlike the wavy lines that enclose it. The line coils and undulates like a serpent … and it may be because of that similarity that the Kuurians call it `Dragon River.”’
We stared intently at the replica of the miniature chart, listening in utter silence as the old man spoke.
“Now, as for these regularly wavy lines which. we see both above and below and to the right of the serpentine line, they suggest to me nothing more or less than a stylized way of indicating mountain ridges on a map. Some cartographers, you know, sketch in miniature drawings of mountains, others prefer to illustrate the natural features on a map with some manner of conventional design. These wavy lines, then, could well represent the major ridges of the mountains which Ool the Uncanny called `the Peaks of Harangzar.”’
“Go on,” Prince Valkar urged.
“I believe that this triangular mark represents the secret citadel of the Mind Wizards. It may represent a single pyramidal building, or the entrance to a subterranean cavern system, a castle, or even a city. We have no way of telling that in advance, and shall not be able to make certain until we are on the spot.”
He put the replica chart down on the table and beamed upon us his serene, saintly smile.
“The most amusing thing about this humble discovery of mine,” he said, “is that I should not have been able to make these guesses if we did not have the vital clue Prince Jandar had already given us. Possessing this verbal information about the mountains and the river, it becomes possible to make sense out of a map deliberately designed to look like a meaningless scribble. And, of course, the Mind Wizards could not have known what Ool the Uncanny had let slip in his conversation with the prince, that time they dueled to the death there in the Pits. Either bit of information is completely useless without possession of the other; possessing both, we should find it remarkably easy to find the location of Kuur.”
Fat, moon-faced Kaamurath of Soraba had lolled wheezing in his chair throughout this, sucking noisily on sweetmeats, his bright, quick little eyes fixed unswervingly on Zastro’s face. Now, for the first time, he spoke in his high, breathy voice.
“This personage is not entirely certain he follows the meaning of the admirable sage of the Ku Thad,” he said politely. “We still have half a world to search, do we not? And we must still cover many hundreds or even thousands of korads before we can hope to find the hiding place of the despicable Mind Wizards?”
Zastro smiled again. “Yes, but the Seraan forgets how rapidly the ornithopters cover ground; and how easy it will be to find a river that curves with this precise configuration. Besides, we will be looking for mountains. On this hemisphere of Thanator, only two mountain ranges of any particular size or importance break the flatness of the land-surface, the White Mountains of the Sky Pirates to the north of the Grand Kumala, and the Black Mountains of the Yathoon Horde to the south. The land-surface of Thanator is not extremely extensive; it is nowhere near the size of Prince Jandar’s home-world, whereon, he informs me, many score of major mountain ranges arise in six or seven different continental masses. No, sire, we shall find it easy to search from the air, investigate only the mountains, and we shall look for a river of this configuration. Besides, we have one further important geographical clue on the medallion which as yet I have not mentioned.”
“And what may that be?” the Seraan wheezed.
“This mountain at the end of the river, which is larger than any of the others, and whose crest seems to be cloven into three distinct peaks. That would seem to be a very distinctive landmark, and one we can hardly fly over, or near, without noticing. It would seem to be the mountain in which the headwaters of the Dragon River rise. It narrows our search considerably.”
And so the council determined that Zastro had indeed hit upon the secret of the medallion, and the location of shadowy Kuur was at last known to us.
We all felt jubilant over the discovery, and more eager than ever to launch our expedition against the homeland of the Mind Wizards.
As for myself, I felt a certain chagrin-mingled, it must be admitted, with wry humor.
For five months we had searched our wits and racked our brains for the secret of the location of Kuur.
And for five months I had―quite literally―been carrying it around in my pocket!
Chapter 3
Shondakor, Farewell!
Once the keen perception of Zastro had penetrated the mystery to its core, and we knew that we possessed, at very least, a vital clue to the location of Kuur, events moved rapidly towards our departure.
We would of course employ the sky navy of Shondakor for this purpose. There was never really any question but that we would fly to the secret fortress of the Mind Wizards. The ingenious and remarkable winged galleons invented by the Sky Pirates of Zanadar could traverse the globe far swifter than any army, mounted on thaptors or borne in chariots drawn by those ungainly, hippo-like draft-animals the Thanatorians call the glymph. True, the number of armed warriors and supplies we could transport by ornithopter was strictly limited, whereas by land we could move as large a host of fighting-men as we might care to assemble: but speed was of the essence, and the element of surprise in our attack might prove the single factor that would tip the scales of destiny towards victory rather than defeat.
And so the sky navy was made ready. Perhaps the term “sky navy” sounds a bit presumptuous; the flying galleons in the service of royal Shondakor were, after all, but two in number. Actually, it was the fat, sleepy-eyed Prince of Soraba who coined the term. Soraba is a maritime realm, and employs a mercantile navy to transport its goods between the four Perushtarian cities and also to trade with the cities of Ganatol and Shondakor, which are built on the shores of navigable rivers.
The neologism was invented in this manner. Kaamurath of Soraba had offered the use of his navy to transport the legions of war across that inland sea called the Corund Laj. Then, pausing, blinking thoughtfully, he reminded himself that the Golden City possessed its own navy―a small one, true enough―but a navy whose keels rode the golden skies of Thanator rather than her green seas. A “sky navy” he called it―kajathol in the universal language shared in common between all of the many human or humanoid races of Callisto.* The term caught on by reason of its novelty, I suppose, and was used to refer to our two winged galleons from that point on.