The Return of Tharn Part 35

He rose and began to pace the floor. "You're right. Let me think. There is an entrance to the corridors housing the pits of Jaltor's palace, an entrance supposedly secret, which Jotan himself once pointed out to me."

He wheeled suddenly and entered his sleeping quarters, returning a moment later with a flint knife in a sheath at his belt and there was the light of battle in his eyes.

"Return to your room, Alurna," he said grimly. "I will go to free Jotan and his men."

She shook her head. "This was my idea and I'm going with you."

"But--but this is dangerous! If I am caught I shall be thrown in the pits myself--perhaps killed. This is no venture for a woman!"

"It is a venture for _this_ woman," she replied doggedly. "Jotan is to be my mate ... even though he may not realize that yet. He must find me beside you when we rescue him."

For a long moment they stared into each other's eyes--then Tamar's shoulder rose and fell in surrender.

"As you wish," he said.

Sitab, warrior of the palace of Jaltor, moved stealthily down a steep ramp. About him was darkness more intense than that of a tomb, forcing him to feel his way with infinite slowness lest a misstep make a noise loud enough to rouse one or more of the guards in the arms-rooms here and there among the subterranean corridors.

From one of his hands trailed a heavy spear; in the other was a keen-edged knife of flint ready for the first man who should find him where Sitab had no right to be.

For whoever he came across now must die. It would not do for word to reach Jaltor on the morrow that Sitab, a trusted guard, had been seen on his way to the pits.

A miasmic odor of damp decay seemed to increase in strength the further below the earth's surface he progressed. Now and then a water rat would rustle across his path, its pa.s.sage marked only by the rasp of claws on rock. Damp stretches of slippery surface proved difficult to negotiate and on several occasions he saved himself from falling only by a quick movement of his feet. Now and then he would step into ankle-deep pools of chill water, bringing an involuntary gasp to his lips.

At long last his feet found no ramp where one should have been and he realized he now stood at the beginning of the deepest corridor beneath the palace. For a long moment he stood there, his ears straining to catch some sound of life. As from a great distance he caught the m.u.f.fled snores of sleeping men, the faint murmurings of troubled words from a mind dreaming of the horrors to which it awakened after each sleep.

Grasping his spear tighter, Sitab inched his way cautiously along the corridor until his ears told him he was standing between twin rows of cells. From the belt of his robe he drew a small length of tinder-like wood and from a pouch in the same belt came a small ball-like bit of stone, its interior hollowed to hold a supply of moss in the center of which glowed a single coal of fire. Drawing the perforated bit of wood serving as a cork, Sitab let the bit of fire roll out onto the miniature torch. It rested there, glowing redly as he breathed against it. When a minute of this had gone by a tiny tongue of fire rose to life and within seconds the torch was fully lighted, dispelling the ink-like gloom about him.

On silent feet Sitab moved from door to door of the cells. At each barred opening he let the rays of light seep into the tiny interior of the room beyond while his eyes sought to identify the sleeping men.

Some he saw were hardly recognizable as human, so long had they lain prisoner in this awful hole. Matted hair hung over faces so thin and emaciated as hardly to be human at all. Others he saw were still in excellent physical condition: these had been here only a little while.

But none was familiar to him until he was well down the first row. As he peered into this particular cell, he saw a man lying asleep on the bare stone platform which served this cell, as in others, as a crude bunk.

The sleeper's face was turned toward the wall, shadowed by a raised arm, so that Sitab was unable to make out the features. But something was familiar about the man's general build and the shape of his head, and for several minutes Sitab stood there waiting for the man to stir in his sleep sufficiently for his face to be seen.

When full five minutes had pa.s.sed without this taking place, Sitab broke a small piece of the rotting wood from his torch and flipped it unerringly through the barred grating of the door. It struck lightly against the bare arm of the sleeper, and he sighed heavily, stirred, then turned his face toward the light.

Sitab stiffened, waiting for the man to awake and cry out in alarm at the glare of the torch. But the eyes did not open and the prisoner lapsed back into complete slumber. Only then did Sitab see who lay sleeping there.

It was Jotan.

A slight gasp escaped the guard's lips. Jotan _here_! But Jotan was dead! Vokal himself had said as much.

Sitab smiled. No matter that Vokal had been misinformed; Jotan would be dead within seconds. Vokal would reward him well for killing both Jotan _and_ Garlud--if the latter were imprisoned here as well.

How best to kill him? Open the door, creep to the side of the sleeping man and plunge the spearhead into his heart? That would be the quietest way ... and also the most dangerous. What if Jotan were in reality awake--lying there waiting for this unknown visitor to enter the cell, then jumping upon him in a bid for freedom.

A glance at those muscles, even though apparently relaxed in sleep, was enough to give him his decision. Lifting his spear, he thrust its point between the bars of the door, aimed it squarely at Jotan's exposed chest--and tensed his muscles to launch the heavy weapon.

CHAPTER XIV

AMBUSH

For a long time after Sitab was gone, Vokal remained seated on a low bench in the living room of his apartment. Worry was crowding in on his mind, the ambition that had led him into discrediting Garlud was proving itself a curse, and his love for Rhoa, wife of old Heglar, was now a burdensome thing that had cost him a thousand tals and might end up costing him his life.

Well, the die was cast now; there was no turning back. Dawn was no more than two or three hours away; long before Dyta's golden rays flooded Ammad's streets Sitab should have returned with word that Heglar and Garlud were dead. Everything depended on that now--it was still not too late to recoup, winning back his thousand tals and a higher place in Ammad's society.

The silver-haired n.o.bleman rose from his chair and reached for the candle to blow out its flame. A few hour's sleep would make him better able to face the morrow....

... From her place on the narrow balcony of the n.o.bleman's apartment, Dylara watched the candle flame perish under the man's exhalation. This time, she thought, I will not wait so long for him to fall asleep. She watched him cross the room and disappear from sight into the sleeping quarters beyond, waited for the s.p.a.ce of a hundred heartbeats to be sure he would not come into this room again, then very slowly, her heart in her mouth, she began to move with extreme stealth across the floor toward the corridor door.

The journey seemed to take hours although two minutes were all that pa.s.sed before she reached out to remove the heavy bar Vokal had dropped into place when his last guest was gone. With trembling fingers she set the thick length of wood against the stone flooring and slowly swung the door open a crack.

Light gleamed dully from down the corridor. With great care she widened the distance between the door's edge and its frame. When the s.p.a.ce was large enough, she put her head out cautiously and looked along the corridor.

Standing there, watching her with wide eyes, was one of the palace guards!

Shock held both Dylara and the guard momentarily paralyzed--then Dylara, the first to recover, was into the corridor and running swiftly in the opposite direction.

Behind her she heard the guard shout a command. But before he could do more, she was around a bend in the corridor and racing toward the stairs she knew were further along....

... Vokal, not yet completely asleep, leaped from his bed at the sound of a sudden hoa.r.s.e cry from outside his apartment. When he arrived at the open door--a door he had only moments before barred from inside--he found a knot of palace guards already a.s.sembled there.

"What has happened?" he demanded sharply.

The man regularly stationed outside his door explained in a few words.

Vokal's cheeks paled at the full implication of what had occurred came to him. Whoever this mystery woman was, she had overheard--_must_ have overheard--his conversations with both Rhoa and Sitab. Were she a spy--someone who would go to Jaltor with what she had heard--Vokal was a dead man!

"Find her!" he screamed. "A hundred tals to the man who brings her alive, to me. Death to all of you unless she is found! Go!"

They went. They went as though the hounds of h.e.l.l were at their heels.

Within seconds every floor of the palace was alight with torches, every hall crowded with warriors, every room being searched. Guards at the palace gates were alerted, patrols were set to scouring the grounds between palace and outer wall.

There was no sign of the missing girl.

Tharn, sleeping soundly as a man does whose conscience is clear and whose bed is no more uncomfortable than a hundred others he has occupied, awakened suddenly. For a brief moment he lay without moving, his ears searching for some indication of what had awakened him.

There! The barest whisper of leather against stone from down the corridor that ran past his cell door. A sandaled foot had made that sound. Other ears--even the ears of a man already awake--would have missed what his sleeping brain had caught.