The Ganatolian then questioned all of the other officers and warriors in his troop, but none remembered having seen the two young people at any point later than had Kadar.
“Very well; tomorrow, after breakfast, we will start the search at that place, beginning with the last position at which they are known to have been,” decided Lukor.
He turned his attention to the study of the death roster which Koja had drawn up. It was complete in every detail, but something about it nagged at his mind, bothering him in a way he could not quite describe, even to himself.
SOMETIME later, Koja, just going off guard duty, noticed while making his way to his bedroll that Lukor was still awake. The expression on the old Ganatolian’s face was one of troubled thoughtfulness.
“You seem disturbed, friend Lukor,” observed the solemn arthropod, coming up to where his captain sat studying a scroll by the light of a flaring torch. “Does your wound still annoy you?”
“A scratch, nothing more,” shrugged the other, dismissing the slight injury he had taken in the battle. “I have been looking at the roster of the dead which you prepared. What disturbs me is the number of the corpses.”
“Our own losses were light,” murmured the Yathoon, mistaking the death-count to which Lukor referred to be that of the Fleet-members slain in the battle.
“I mean the Kuurian corpses,” Lukor snapped testily. “I’ve just gone over the figures for the third time tonight. There were sixteen of the yellow devils alive before the battle. After the battle, we found fifteen carcasses.”
“Then… ?”
“Precisely. Where is the sixteenth corpse?”
Book II
INTO AN UNKNOWN WORLD
Chapter 6
THE YELLOW DWARF
FROM the southern slopes of the Peaks of Harangzar they watched with longing eyes the departure of the five flying galleons. Ylana and Tomar exchanged an eloquent glance, but said nothing. For there was truly nothing to be said.
The skies of Thanator had flushed with the bright golden splendor of that weird dawn that illuminates the heavens of the jungle Moon like a vast, silent explosion of auric light. By the brilliance of that illumination, the youth and the savage girl observed the mighty ships of the sky ascend from their moorings until they hovered as weightlessly as so many clouds above the Valley of the Mind Wizards.
One by one, they circled the vale, they drew into the familiar arrowhead formation, and pointed their ornate prows toward the horizon of the west, spread their great ungainly wings to catch the morning breeze, and sailed for the far and distant Edge of the World, bound for Shondakor and Tharkol and Soraba.
Tomar bowed his head despairingly, striving to think, and trying to force back the hot tears that filled his eyes, so that the girl at his side might not discover the depth of his emotion and the bitterness of his despair.
She was his to care for now, for there was no other to stand between the slim, lovely child of the jungle Country and this unexplored and savage wilderness and the innumerable dangers it contained.
He wanted her to think him braver and more manly than he knew himself to be―as brave and as manly, at least, as events now required him to be.
He did not want her to see the gleam of tears in his eyes. For, to stand between Ylana and the perils of the wild, he must play the part of a strong and courageous fighting man.
It would not do for her to see him weeping like a child who is frightened of the dark.
BUT, in all honesty, there was reason enough and more for him to feel despair, if not indeed to be fearful of the fate that awaited them in this hostile, new world.
That which preyed most upon Tomar’s mind was the knowledge that his friends and comrades had sailed for home without him and Ylana, abandoning them to an unknown destiny. He could hardly imagine why Prince Jandar and the others should have done this. The only reason that occurred to him was that, just possibly, the warriors of the West believed that Tomar and Ylana were dead, slain in the battle in which the citadel of the Mind Wizards had been conquered.
And yet it was not at all like Jandar of Callisto to fly away and leave them behind without positive evidence of their demise. Nor could the boy picture Lukor of Ganatol or Koja of the Yathoon Horde nor any of his other friends and comrades aboard the fleet behaving in so callous and careless a manner.
Their behavior seemed inexplicable. And yet with his own eyes he had seen the departure of the Armada.
It did not, unfortunately, occur to Tomar to count the number of aerial vessels that had made their departure that morning. Had he done so, and had he noted with care which of the great sailing ships of the sky had flown from Kuur, he might have realized the truth: that one of the great ornithopters had remained behind with the occupation force.
For, of course, the Jalathadar had not sailed but was still moored in the secret cavern within the mountain of the triple peaks which stood like a mighty monument at the far eastern end of the Valley of Kuur.
This Tomar could not have known. Nor could he see clearly enough from his particular vantage point that the warriors of the West still remained encamped before the Gates of Kuur.
And so Tomar thought himself and Ylana left behind by his former comrades, abandoned to an unknown fate, lost and alone and helpless in an unknown world.
These were not pleasant thoughts, but far less pleasant even than these broodings was the fact that both he and the girl were the prisoners of a cunning and implacable enemy who had disarmed and bound them in the valley of Kuur.
For, even as Lukor of Ganatol had begun to surmise, one of the dread Mind Wizards yet lived.
Worse yet, it was Zhu Kor, that merciless and cruel yellow fiend, high in the hierarchy of the dwarfish telepaths, who had probed and fondled the most intimate places in Tomar’s mind.
Tomar shuddered inwardly, remembering with crawling horror the cold, hideous sensation of those icy, insidious tendrils of thought from an alien brain slithering through his tenderest and most private memories.
And again he tasted the bitterness of despair. For, while it was dire and difficult enough to have been taken prisoner, the position in which he and Ylana now found themselves was the uttermost extremity of hopelessness.
For how can you escape from a captor who can read your every thought?
IT had seemed likely to Tomar that, with the fleet of the West having departed from Kuur, the yellow dwarf who held them prisoners would seek to re-enter the Underground City. Doubtless Zhu Kor was adept in the use of the uncanny science and arms of his people. When the dwarfish telepath had fled into the secret passages in order to avoid being captured or slain by the warriors of the Three Cities, he had enjoyed such a slender margin of time that he had only been able to snatch up a leather case of food and drink, and had armed himself with only one of the slim rapiers, selected from among the variety of swords that adorned the walls of the stone chamber, along with a mysterious hand weapon of glittering metal and crystal, whose purpose and nature were still unknown to the two youngsters.
Inexplicably, however, Zhu Kor turned his back on Kuur and impelled his prisoners in the opposite direction.
As they stumbled along, wrists bound behind their backs, loops of cord about their throats held like dogs’ leashes in the wrinkled clawlike hand of their master, the two young people puzzled as to where their destination might be.