United States or United States Virgin Islands ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The kaldane, still holding her turned half away from her to look in the direction she had indicated and simultaneously, with the quickness of a banth, she struck him with her right fist, backed by every ounce of strength she possessed struck the back of the pulpy head just above the collar.
Gahan glanced at the hideous face of the king. "Seek not his eyes," screamed Tara in warning; but it was too late. Already the horrid hypnotic gaze of the king kaldane had seized upon the eyes of Gahan. The red warrior hesitated in his stride. His sword point drooped slowly toward the floor. Tara glanced toward Ghek.
"A woman, and a man with a strange head," replied Turan. "It is possible," said the officer; "but what were their names?" "The woman was Tara, Princess of Helium, and the man was Ghek, a kaldane, of Bantoom." "These were your friends?" asked the officer. "Yes," replied Turan. "It is what I would know," said the officer, and with a curt command to his men to follow him he turned and left the cell.
And as he withdrew it from the last position the kaldane rolled lifeless from its stumbling rykor and Turan sprang quickly down the steps to engage the next behind, and then Ghek had drawn Tara upward and a turn in the stairway shut the battling panthan from her view; but still she heard the ring of steel on steel, the clank of accouterments and the shrill whistling of the kaldanes.
No, he would never come, now. He had disobeyed her. He smiled at the sweet recollection of those words of command that had fallen from her dear lips. He had disobeyed her and now he had lost the reward. But what of her? What now would be her fate starving before a hostile city with only an inhuman kaldane for company? Another thought a horrid thought obtruded itself upon him.
Gahan, too, realized the danger and the necessity for instant action. Clinging to the rope with his left hand, he had wound a leg about it, leaving his right hand free for his long-sword which he had not sheathed. A downward cut clove the soft head of a kaldane, and another severed the taut rope beneath the panthan's feet.
The girl did not complain, but Turan knew that she must be suffering and his heart was heavy within him. Ghek suffered least of all, and he explained to them that his kind could exist for long periods without food or water. Turan almost cursed him as he saw the form of Tara of Helium slowly wasting away before his eyes, while the hideous kaldane seemed as full of vitality as ever.
She startled Ghek once by exclaiming aloud, almost fiercely: "I still live!" "What do you mean?" asked the kaldane. "I mean just what I say," she replied. "I still live and while I live I may still find a way. Dead, there is no hope." "Find a way to what?" he asked. "To life and liberty and mine own people," she responded. "None who enters Bantoom ever leaves," he droned.
"Then there is a way sst!" he was suddenly silent and pointing toward the base of the wall at the end of the room. Turan looked in the direction the other's forefinger indicated, to see projecting from the mouth of an ulsio's burrow two large chelae and a pair of protruding eyes. "Ghek!" he cried and immediately the hideous kaldane crawled out upon the floor and approached the table.
"Look not upon the eyes of Luud," warned the kaldane, "or you are lost." Within the chamber Gahan saw Tara of Helium in the clutches of a mighty body, while close to the wall upon the opposite side of the apartment crouched the hideous, spider-like Luud.
Word Of The Day