The subterranean passage in which they had been taken prisoner by the last surviving Mind Wizard had led onto the slopes of the southern mountains, the exit therefrom being concealed behind a slab of rough rock which seemed to the eye simply an outcropping of stone.
Instead of leading his captives back into the terminus of the underground passageway, by that means to retrace their steps back into the subterranean city which they believed was by now empty, the yellow dwarf turned their faces into the west and marched them before him between the twin peaks and down the further slope.
Nor did Zhu Kor bother to enlighten them as to where they were headed, nor why they did not return to Kuur. The Mind Wizard had, as yet, said very little to the two captives. He seemed distracted and thoughtful, the wrinkled yellow mask of his skull-like visage drawn into a frown of somber meditation.
It was not difficult to imagine some of the thoughts that passed through the mind of Zhu Kor. His race was destroyed and with it all its plans and plots and schemes for the future conquest and subjugation of this world. This was enough to give the most implacable villain pause for inward contemplation.
In simple fact, of course, the Kuurian with his mind-reading powers was fully aware of those recent events whereof Tomar of Shondakor and Ylana of the Jungle Country were as yet ignorant. He knew, from his uncanny sensory perceptions, that a strong host of the fighting men of the West yet invested Kuur, that rather than having been left deserted, the Underground City of the Mind Wizards was under close and careful guard by the warriors of Lukor’s force. He knew, as well, from his weird ability to eavesdrop upon the private thoughts of others, that Koja and Lukor and Ergon and the rest of Tomar and Ylana’s former shipmates were now actively searching for the lost pair, aware that one of the Mind Wizards was still at large.
And he knew that Lukor’s men would be on his trail all too soon.
THEY slept that night in the depths of a narrow cave at the base of the southern range of mountains which surrounded the Valley of Kuur.
Tomar and Ylana slept but fitfully, for all that they were exhausted from the descent of the steep southern slopes. The way down would have taxed their strength and agility even had their hands been free. But Zhu Kor did not dare to cut them loose from their bonds, for some reason he did not explain. Not only did he keep their hands tied, but he forced them to retain about their throats the loops of cord whose ends he had tied to his own wrist.
They were loosely knotted, those leashes, and had either Tomar or Ylana fallen or attempted to flee, they would have tightened around their necks and strangled them. Therefore, it had been necessary to find a way down the mountain by slow and easy stages, following a meandering ledge by which the boy and girl could descend without using their hands. This had consumed most of the day, without a single pause for rest or sustenance.
With nightfall the Mind Wizard had forced them into the dank recesses of the narrow cave, and then he had, however grudgingly, permitted them to eat and to drink, albeit quite sparingly, from his stores. Then he instructed them to seek what repose they could until dawn, settling himself in the mouth of the cave, so that he stood between his two captives and freedom.
Zhu Kor himself did not sleep. The Kuurians despised the body and its grossly physical needs, and had learned to drive and discipline themselves. To conquer the weariness that pervaded his dwarfish form, the yellow man swallowed a certain powder which his kind carried ever on their persons. The drug overrode the weariness of the body and the desire for slumber.
It was dangerous, that drug, he knew all too well. But he took it nonetheless. For he had much thinking to do.
He was the last of his kind in all this world, and he knew it. But he knew also that the powers of the mind that he possessed made him the most dangerous of all the living creatures on this planet, and potentially the most powerful of them all. A single savant of his racethe insidious Ool―had achieved utter dominance over that powerful bandit legion called the Chac Yuul, in times gone by. Another, in a similar fashion, became the secret power behind the throne of Zanadar, and had subjugated the immensely powerful Sky Pirates to his wishes. A third, Ang Chan, had manipulated the Princess of Tharkol like a puppet on a string, precipitating her insane attempt to conquer the entire world of Thanator.
Pondering these matters, Zhu Kor permitted a small, cold smile of cunning to touch the corners of his thin lips.
For Ool and Ang Chan and the Mind Wizard who had secretly ruled the Sky Pirates of Zanadar―one Rakhu by namehad been but less skilled at mind control than he. For he, Zhu Kor, was the fourth most powerful and the fourth most ancient member of the yellow men of Kuur.
And, with the destruction of his superiors, and the extinction of his kind, he had now achieved supremacy. He was the last and now the greatest of the Kuurians.
And the conquest of this planet might still be within his grasp…
Dreaming his mad dreams of power and conquest and of the subjugation of an entire planet, he stared with unseeing eyes upon a night now made glorious by the rising of the great moons of Gordrimator, or Jupiter. Among them, the far distant world from which he and all his kind had immigrated by a means now known only to himself alone.
Chapter 7
THE TERROR OF THE SKIES
WHEN the dawn of the second morning after the destruction of Kuur illuminated the golden and vaporous skies of the jungle Moon, Zhu Kor roused his prisoners rudely from their rest and bade them relieve themselves, partake of a few morsels of nourishment and a sip of precious water, and be on their way.
Although the Mind Wizard contemptuously regarded the two young specimens of humanity, who to his coldly superior mind were little better than cattle, he did not awaken them with a kick or a blow. Physical punishments were all but alien to the thinking of his kind, for in every conceivable manner they eschewed the things of the body. This doubtless ex. plained why such purely physical means of coercion as torture or bodily abuse had not been visited upon Tomar and the other warriors during their recent captivity in Kuur.
When one possesses the uncanny ability to insert a mental probe into the minds of others, physical mis. treatment becomes a vapid anachronism and a super. fluous cruelty.
He awoke them with a swift, sharp mental probe into their dreaming brains.
Tomar jerked awake, cold and sweating, haunted by hideous memories of similar violations.
At least he was accustomed to such experiences. This unfortunately, was not so with Ylana. The savage girl awoke screaming in terror, her eyes wide and glazed with shock at so intimate a touch. It took Tomar some time to soothe her frightened and bewildered sobs. And all the while the hunched, gaunt, dwarfish Zhu Kor watched his slaves with idle amusement.
“You shall learn, animal, to suffer far worse from your master,” said the Kuurian, calmly. “Absolute and instantaneous obedience to my every whim is the only course of behavior that will insure that similar experiences occur but seldom. Learn to anticipate my wishes and to act before prodded into action, if you dislike the prod so much. Remember that there exists no portion of your being―body, mind or soul―that I cannot violate in any manner, at any time, if only to amuse myself.”
Ylana, now crimson with outrage after recovering from her shock, would have spat a crude epithet, had not Tomar shouted at her to hold her tongue. She shot the boy a smoldering glare of mute and vindictive fury, but swallowed her words. This seemed to afford their captor a certain degree of cold satisfaction.