"Tark, do not kill! You were to watch, not to kill yet!"
The memory crashed suddenly through his mind, the memory of where he had heard that name before.
The weird dream of alien, menacing thought-voices, the flying shadow in his room and the sound of wings in the night-memory of them ripped the alcoholic fog from Eric Nelson's mind.
His hands suddenly gripped the girl's slim shoulders with bruising force. "You said 'Tark!'" he rasped. "You said it before when I thought I was dreaming. You were talking somehow to that wolf!"
The caution and suspicion that had kept him alive for ten years in China's wars were all on the alert at this moment, dominating Nelson.
He glared at the girl. "You got me here for a reason. You know Shan Kar, you're of his race. Why are you spying on him?"
Nsharra looked back into his accusing eyes, with a little hurt look on her delicate face. She spoke softly.
She said, "Kill now, Tark!"
The wolf-dog was a dark thunderbolt that leaped in from the doorway and knocked Nelson sprawling as Nsharra jerked swiftly back.
Nelson made one abortive gesture toward his gun and then knew that, before he could draw it, his throat would be cut. He wrapped his arms around his own neck as he rolled with the wolf-dog's hairy weight on top of him.
He felt needle-sharp fangs rip his forearm. The most horrible part of the moment was that the wolf-dog sought his life in complete silence, without growl or snarl.
Then the great stallion screamed outside the hut and a gun roared. Nelson heard Nsharra's flying feet and silvery cry.
"Tark! Hatha — Ei! We go!"
"Nelson!" yelled Li Kin's startled voice.
Nelson became aware that the wolf-dog was no longer atop him. He scrambled to his feet, dazed and shaken.
The hut was empty. He stumbled to the door, and caromed into Li Kin. The little Chinese officer had his automatic in his hand and wore a stunned look in his spectacled eyes.
"I followed you, Nelson!" he babbled. "I saw you come to this hut with the girl but when I came near the stallion attacked me! I shot at it and missed."
"The girl? Where's the girl now?" Nelson cried. He was cold sober now and his daze was dissolving in red anger.
"She and the wolf burst out, knocked me over and fled!" Li Kin cried. "See, there they go!"
Nelson got a shadowy glimpse of a stallion and rider and a slinking wolf-shape racing westward down the dusty road in the uncertain starlight.
Over stallion, rider and wolf, moving west with them against the stars, flew a winged black soaring thing.
"There was something on the stallion's back when I came!" Li Kin exclaimed. "An eagle or other great bird — it's queer!"
"It's more than queer," rasped Eric Nelson. He gripped the slashed forearm that was beginning to throb and burn. "Come on — I want to see this man Shan Kar!"
Li Kin kept recurring to the beasts as they slogged hastily through dark dusty streets toward the inn.
"She spoke to them, as though they were people! She was like a witch, a mistress of kuei, with her familiars!"
"Will you forget those animals?" Nelson snapped.
He was angry and he was angry because he was a little afraid. He had been afraid before, many times, but not of something as uncanny as this, not of a girl and three beasts and a dream.
The dark courtyard of the inn echoed with the stamping and trampling of scores of hoofs. Shaggy little ponies were squealing and biting in protest as Nick Sloan and Lefty and Van Voss loaded the heavy packs from the arsenal onto them.
Nelson found Shan Kar in the corner of the courtyard, a dark, tense figure impatiently watching the hurried preparations.
"Just who is Nsharra?" Nelson asked him flatly.
Shan Kar turned like a goaded leopard. The light from the inn's window showed the narrowed gleam of the man's eyes.
"What do you know of Nsharra?" asked Shan Kar.
"She's one of your own people, isn't she?" Nelson pressed. "She comes from L'Lan too?"
Shan Kar's handsome face was taut and dark. "What do you know of Nsharra?" he repeated dangerously.
Eric Nelson knew then that he had failed in his attempt to surprise full explanation from the other.
Li Kin broke in excitedly. "A girl with a stallion and a wolf and an eagle! They would have killed Nelson if I had not interrupted! But they got away!"
Shan Kar, staring beyond them, spoke softly between his teeth. "Nsharra here — and Tark and Hatha and Ei too! Then they have followed me and watched me."
"Who is she? What does it mean?" Nelson demanded.
Shan Kar answered with brooding slowness. "She is daughter of Kree, Guardian of the Brotherhood — the enemies of my people!"
He added tightly, "And it means that the Brotherhood is striking at us even before we reach L'Lan. We must go swiftly if we are ever to reach the valley!"
Chapter III
INTO MYSTERY
They had gone swiftly. Two weeks and half a thousand miles of the wildest mountains on Earth lay behind them. They were still climbing as the fifteenth day gathered toward the explosive climax of sunset.
Eric Nelson looked back down the shoulder of the great gray mountain and saw the little line of heavily laden pack-ponies crawling up the trail after him like a disjointed hairy snake.
Ahead of them the treeless slope they climbed went up to a ridge against the sky like a springboard into infinity. Against the glory of fusing colors that fired the western heavens, Shan Kar and his mount loomed bigger than life.
Shan Kar stopped suddenly, pointed skyward and uttered a yell.
"Now what?" exclaimed Nick Sloan, riding beside Nelson. "Do you suppose he's sighted his valley? He said we would tonight."
"No, something's wrong!" Eric Nelson said quickly. He spurred forward, his tired shaggy pony manfully responding.
They reached Shan Kar at the very crest of the ridge. From here they looked westward toward another and parallel gigantic mountain range. Its highest, northern peaks were snow-capped and beyond it was a dim stupendous vista of still other ranges.
Between this next great rampart and the one on whose crest they stood yawned a deep gorge, wooded thickly with fir and poplar and larch. Shadows were already deepening in the forests down there.
This was the mountain wilderness that stretched between the southeastern Kunlun Ranges and Koko Nor. And it was still one of the least-known parts of Earth.
Warplanes had flown over this mountainous no-man's-land in the last few years. A few explorers like Hedin had, at great peril, toiled across sectors of it. But most of it was as little-known as when the French missionaries, Hue and Gabet, had trudged through it a hundred years before. There was little here to tempt exploration, and there were hostile Tibetan and Mongol tribes to discourage it.
"Your guns!" Shan Kar was shouting as Nelson and Sloan rode up. "Shoot them, quickly!"
He was pointing skyward. Bewildered, Eric Nelson looked up. There was nothing in the fire-shot heavens but two eagles planing down a thousand feet above the ridge.
"There's nothing up there—" Nelson began puzzledly, when Shan Kar interrupted.
"The eagles! Kill them or our danger is great!"
It hit Nelson in the face. It brought back all the uncanny memory of Nsharra and her weird animal companions — a memory he had deliberately sought to rationalize and forget during the two weeks' trek.
Shan Kar was in deadly earnest. His black eyes glared hatred and fear at the two bkck winged shapes swooping in smooth circles through the sunset.
"Cursed native superstitions!" Nick Sloan grunted. "But I suppose we have to humor him."