He looked to be sixteen, perhaps younger. His lean, bony physique was naked except for battered boots and a scrap of cloth twisted about his loins. Whoever he was, and however he had come to this end, he had been starved and brutally mistreated. The raw weals of a savage whipping gleamed wetly across his chest and shoulders, and his bony ribs thrust through his skin.
His silky hair of raw pale gold was shaggy and unkempt. His face was dirty and sullen, but it was a good face, with clear alert eyes, amber-gold in a tawny-skinned face. He had a strong jaw and finely molded mouth, and his broad, high brow denoted intelligence and breeding.
I could see about him none of the dainty effeminacy I found so offensive in the pampered princelings who dwelt in the jeweled cities. Starved to skin and bones, his limbs were supple and lithe and his muscular development was extraordinary for a boy of his age. He was no painted and perfumed fop from the delicate life of court and city, but a hardy, rangy, long-legged youngster sprung from the savage wilderness itself. I wondered what foes had staked him here to die, and for what reason. And I admired the grim, dogged determination he displayed, as he fought to free his hand from the tight thongs, stoically ignoring the pain he so obviously suffered.
But death was very near him now, in the form of a hideous monster insect. I recognized it as a phuol, a sort of scorpion—but one the size of a full-grown dog. Eyes mounted on protruding stalks glared at the bound youth; pincerlike claws swung from an armored thorax; a horrible barbed tail, poison sac swollen with venom, hovered menacingly above its scuttling body as it inched forward on six jointed legs.
The boy had not seen it yet. His full attention was fixed on the thong he was striving to loosen from his puffed, purple hand.
In a way, the thing was beautiful. Its chitinous exoskeleton glittered like blue enamel. Its huge pincers were like something carved from immense fragments of flashing sapphire crystal by some nightmarish sculptor. Eyes like ruby chips blazed with soulless hunger.
Silent as a moving shadow, the blue death glided nearer—nearer.
There was nothing that I could do. I was as immaterial as a wisp of air; I could not even utter a warning cry.
The boy saw it at last. His face whitened, his eyes stared in horror, his lips parted in a cry inaudible to me.
Then, in a rush, the scuttling horror was upon him, the poison-sting sinking its barb in the flesh of his leg.
Chapter 4
THE DEAD CITY
In fascinated horror I watched the last act of the drama. An invisible spectator, unable to intervene, I looked on as the brave boy fought against death.
His cries must have rung loudly through the leafy silence. He threshed his bare body violently, striving to dislodge the venomous phuol.
Startled, the monster scorpion retreated from his threshing prey and hesitated before launching a second attack.
The brute would not have long to wait. Poison from its sting had already entered the boy’s body and must be infiltrating his blood even now. The lips of the wound blackened almost visibly, and the boy’s calf began to swell as the poison circulated.
I knew something of the nature of the phuol, although on my previous adventure I had been lucky enough not to encounter one. But the foresters of Siona’s band, and the assassins of Ardha, employ the venom of these blue scorpions to render poisonous their dagger-blades and arrowtips. And I understood that the phuol were cowardly killers, who injected their venom into their prey, waited until the poison had paralyzed them, and then fed on the helpless and still-living bodies of their victims.
Already the boy’s extremities must be numbing as the subtle venom worked through his system. His eyes glazed; his breath came in ragged, uneven pants; his blond head lolled on one shoulder.
The phuol crept stealthily near again.
But this time its charge was interrupted.
Without the slightest warning there stepped from behind the cover of immense gold-tissue leaves a tall, lean man curiously armed with a rod of crystal.
His figure was gaunt, his features ascetic. A close-fitting cowl covered his head, leaving only his face bare. It was a cryptic mask, that face; hooded eyes of lambent mercury observed the scene with cool, thoughtful, unhurried appraisal. The face was the mellow ivory hue of old parchment, youthful and unlined, calm and serene. Keen intelligence and weary boredom gleamed in those brilliant quicksilver eyes; the man had about him the look of the scholar, the aesthete.
One hand was strangely gloved in a black metallic fabric. It was the hand which clasped that shaft of sparkling crystal. This scepter-like rod bore caps of black metal at either terminus. Within the transparent substance of the rod, fierce light quivered and writhed like a living thing.
At his entrance upon the scene, the phuol had paused to assess this intruder. Now the blue horror began his creeping advance on the pinioned boy again, evidently assuming the tall man would not intervene.
But the monster was mistaken.
With a swift gesture the cowled man leveled the crystal shaft at the phuol and removed the metal capping one end.
Lightning flared! A crackling bolt of incandescent blue-white fire lanced through the green dimness of the branch. Caught in the electric discharge, the giant scorpion stiffened—convulsed—fell to one side, crisped and blackening. Its hideous sting struck blindly again and again at empty air as the monster writhed in its death-throes.
The magician capped his wand swiftly; prisoned lightnings flickered within the crystal shaft as he sheathed this peculiar weapon in a rubbery black tube which hung at his girdle.
Then, ignoring the dying insect, he knelt swiftly by the boy and severed the thongs which bound him to the stakes. The boy sagged limply, staring up at his enigmatic savior with dimming eyes. The magician laid one hand on his naked breast to test his heartbeat; then from a capacious pouch he withdrew a small flask of sparkling red fluid, uncapped it, and poured the contents in the boy’s mouth.
Again he tested the heartbeat, and took the pulse of the boy’s uninjured wrist. Then, apparently satisfied, he picked up the boy in his arms and strode off into the mass of leafage from which he had emerged.
If any reader ever peruses this narrative of marvels, he will understand how they mystified me at the time. Curious, I sent my spirit floating after the enigmatic rescuer and his limp young burden. I followed them down the slope of a long branch to where a most remarkable vehicle stood parked.
It looked for all the world like a child’s sled, with its curled up-curved prow and long, flat runners. It was nearly ten feet long, and the curled prow was shielded to either side with a curved transparent pane like a windshield. The thing was either fashioned of silvery metal, or enameled in that color.
The cowled man stepped into this peculiar craft and deposited his still living burden in the rear, strapping him in. Then he stretched out in the fore part and did something to a control element under the curved prow. To my astonishment the sled glided off the branch and floated through the air, swiftly vanishing into the distance.
I was filled with amazement. This was the first example of a superior technology I had yet encountered on the World of the Green Star. Most of the Laonese—as the people of this planet term their race—seem to inhabit a cultural level comparable to the High Renaissance. But this remarkable flying vehicle—and, come to think of it, the electrical weapon with which the magician had slain the giant scorpion—suggested that there dwelt upon this world some who had attained to an advanced technology.