In the Green Star's Glow. Lin CarterЧитать онлайн книгу.
itself over and over.
Unable to sleep, despite the exertions of the day just past, I rose from my silken bed, donned my buskins, wrapped the scarlet loincloth about me, and belted on my glassy sword.
Restless, I went out upon the balcony of my tower room to gaze forth upon the night, thinking of Niamh.
The World of the Green Star has no moon to illuminate its skies by night, as does my native Earth. It revolves close to its sun of emerald flame, so close that, were it not for its eternal barrier of clouds which interpose themselves between the planet and its parent star, the burning heat of those green rays would scorch the last vestiges of life from the surface of the planet.
Alas, that same eternal and unbroken wall of clouds hide forever from view the innumerable stars of heaven, and the slender and elfin folk of this world—the Laonese, as they call themselves—are denied the splendors of the star-strewn firmament. Hence the nights of Lao are black as doom, in which no man may see his path.
I stared upon the city of Komar, where it crouched upon high cliffs, girdled about with its mighty wall. Guardsmen in the colors of Prince Andar strode the watch about the circuit of that frowning battlement, and they bore torches in their hand to light their path.
By the light of those glimmering torches, I saw a strange and lovely thing. Fashioned all of gleaming metal it was, but it floated upon the breeze as lightly as would a soap bubble. Slim and tapering it was, graceful as the Flying Carpet of Arabic legend, its prow curled back to shelter its riders.
This was the sky-sled we had carried off long ago from the Pylon of Sarchimus the Wise. The extinct Kaloodha had fashioned the flying thing a million years ago.
The moment my eyes fell upon it, I knew that I could delay no longer the satisfaction of the urge that gnawed within me, to search for my lost beloved, though all the wide world lay between us.
With Kara of the Red Dragon, to think was to act This trait had precipitated me into peril many times before now, and doubtless would do so again. A wiser man, or a man less driven by his need, would have paused, thought things out, consulted with his friends. But I sprang over the parapet and clambered down the thick vines as if they had been a ladder.
Lightly as a great cat, I dropped to the top of the citadel wall. The guards had passed this way but a moment before; still the light of their torches gleamed in the glistening gold metal of the sky-sled, where it drifted idly to and fro on the breeze, tethered by its anchor-cable to a stone bench.
It was the work of a moment to glide to where the weird craft floated, to heave myself aboard. I lay flat in one of the shallow depressions made for that purpose, studying the controls. Often I had watched as Zarqa the Kalood had flown the craft The controls were few and admirably simple. There was no doubt in my mind that I could fly the craft.
Then, swiftly and unobtrusively, making certain that I was not observed, I returned to my quarters in the palace and took up my weapons and a warm cloak. In the great hall where the wedding-feast had recently concluded I selected provisions of meat and pastry, and a supply of the delicious if oddly colored foodstuff the Komarians prize, which resembles excellent cheese. There being no other beverage to hand, I scooped up as many bottles of the effervescent, gold-colored wine of the islands as remained unopened, and, returning to where my craft was moored, stored these provisions away in the tail-compartment, which was locked by a clever catch whose secrets I had learned from Zarqa.
Then, buckling myself in the safety harness, I detached and drew aboard the anchor-cable and stored it away in its place while the aerial vehicle floated out over the crooked streets and peaked roofs of Komar.
A moment later, my touch at the sensitive controls sent the silent and weightless craft winging its way out over the dark surface of the sea in the direction in which the sky craft had flown, bearing my beloved princess to a nameless and unknown doom.
Living or dead, I would find her, or perish myself in the attempt
2.
Battle Amid the Clouds
As the sky craft which Ralidux had stolen from the treasure-vaults of the Ancient Ones drifted weightlessly across the roof of Prince Andar’s besieged palace-citadel, Niamh—the Phaolonese princess whom I had come to love under the name of Shann of Kamadhong during my blindness, when we were castaways together on the desert isle of Narjix in the Komarian Sea—had no sooner freed herself from one attacker than a second thrust himself upon her.
The black superman from the Flying City, Ralidux, driven mad by his uncontrollable lust for Arjala the Living Goddess, had carried off Niamh from our desert isle under the mistaken assumption that she was none other than the superb young woman whom he desired above all else. Discovering his error, he had planned to hurl her slim body over the side of the flying vessel. But Niamh, tearing free of her bonds, and plucking from its secret sheath amid the tattered remnants of her garments, that slender, sacred knife which is, to every woman of the Laonese race, the final defense of her chastity, turned upon her kidnapper.
They fought together, there in the cockpit of the sky craft, as it drifted idly over the rooftops of Komar. At length my beloved princess succeeded in striking home: like the fang of a striking cobra, the slim bright blade sunk to its hilt in the heart of the Black Immortal and he toppled from the cockpit to fall to the rooftop far below.
Wrenching her blade from the heart of Ralidux in the instant of his fall, Niamh turned to seize control of the floating air vessel. But in the same moment of time a strange man with azure skin and subtle, crafty eyes sprang into the cockpit from the stony limbs of the colossal statue which loomed atop the palace roof.
Niamh stared at him dazedly. They had never so much as laid eyes on each other before, had Delgan of the Isles and the Princess of Phaolon, but this mattered little. The former Warlord of the Blue Barbarians had seized upon this trick of fortune to make his escape, and would permit no adolescent girl to deter him in his flight.
In one hand he bore that deadly crystal rod in which captive lightnings flickered—the zoukar, or death-flash—which Zarqa and Janchan and I had borne off long ago in our escape from the doomed and dying Pylon of the science magician, Sarchimus the Wise.
Leveling the powerful weapon at the wide-eyed girl—who crouched the length of the cockpit away, a slim, now gory, blade clenched in one small but capable fist—the traitorous Delgan was about to direct the furious ray of the crystal weapon against this unknown girl who stood in the way of his escape.
But then the bidding of caution made him stay his hand. The terrific power of the zoukar was a subject with which he was not completely familiar. To loose its frightful energies within the narrow confines of the cabin might be to damage the sky craft beyond all hopes of repair.
Therefore, with a swift motion, he thrust the crystal weapon into his girdle, and, with a tigerlike bound, flung himself upon the young girl who opposed him.
So swiftly did the mysterious blue man leap into the cabin—and so unexpectedly did he hurl himself upon her—that Niamh was taken by surprise. Suddenly, a hand like an iron vise clamped itself about her wrist, while the blue man flung his other arm about her waist, lifting her from the floor of the cabin. While she sought to plunge her slim blade into his heart, he strove to drag her to the edge of the cockpit and fling the hapless girl over the side.
In the fury of their combat, neither Niamh nor her assailant noticed Zorak the Bowman as he scaled the stony limbs of the colossus. He flung himself across space in an effort to reach the sky-ship before it floated away from the palace roof for a rescue attempt to succeed.
The outstretched fingers of the stalwart Tharkoonian brushed the tail-assembly of the flying craft . . . slipped, then clung. A moment later, the flying craft bore him away, out over the streets of the city. Then his dangling booted heels swung giddily above the tranquil immensity of the inland sea. And this was the last of the flying craft which I, Karn, saw as the Green Star rose up over the horizon to flood the world of the great trees with its emerald light.
Delgan had not dreamed that he would encounter