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Updated: June 3, 2025
"Knew you that my daughter lay a prisoner in your palace?" "He could not know it," interrupted Matai Shang, white with what I am sure was more fear than rage. "He could not know it, for it is a lie." I would have had his life for that upon the spot, but even as I sprang toward him Thuvan Dihn laid a heavy hand upon my shoulder. "Wait," he said to me, and then to Kulan Tith. "It is not a lie.
Our path lay across a plain called Banka Hadla, intersected in many places by deep watercourses, and thinly strewed with Kulan clumps. The moon arose, but cast a cloud-veiled and uncertain light: our path, moreover, was not clear, as the guide, worn out by fatigue, tottered on far in the rear. About midnight we heard delightful sound! the murmur of the distant sea.
Never, she thought, in all her life had the sight of any man been so welcome to her. It was with difficulty that she refrained from rushing forward to meet him. She knew that he loved her; but, in time, she recalled that she was promised to Kulan Tith. Not even might she trust herself to show too great gratitude to the Heliumite, lest he misunderstand. Carthoris was by her side now.
Utan after utan tumbled from the bowels of the Thuria to launch themselves upon the unfortunate green men. Kulan Tith and his Kaolians stood wide-eyed and speechless with amazement as they saw thousands of these strange, fierce warriors emerge from the companion-way of the small craft that could not comfortably have accommodated more than fifty.
Up the broad center aisle we marched beneath deadly silence, and at the foot of the thrones we halted. "Prefer thy charge," said Kulan Tith, turning to one who stood among the nobles at his right; and then Thurid, the black dator of the First Born, stepped forward and faced me. "Most noble Jeddak," he said, addressing Kulan Tith, "from the first I suspected this stranger within thy palace.
It was with a sigh of relief that I quitted the chamber, convinced that nothing more than a guilty conscience had prompted my belief that either of my enemies suspected my true identity. A half-hour later I rode out of the city gate with the column that accompanied Kulan Tith upon the way to meet his friend and ally.
Herds of camels and flocks of milky sheep browsing amongst thorny Acacia and the tufted Kulan, suggested pleasing visions to starving travellers, and for the first time after three days of hard riding, we saw the face of man. The shepherds, Mikahil of the Habr Awal tribe, all fled as we approached: at last one was bold enough to stand and deliver the news.
"It would mean my instant death were my heresy to be suspected in the court of Kulan Tith, but if I may serve you, Prince, you have but to command Torkar Bar, Dwar of the Kaolian Road." Truth and honesty were writ large upon the warrior's noble countenance, so that I could not but have trusted him, enemy though he should have been.
We had traversed the entire way without mishap or adventure, and though the few we had met had eyed the great calot wonderingly, none had pierced the red pigment with which I had smoothly smeared every square inch of my body. But to traverse the surrounding country, and to enter the guarded city of Kulan Tith, Jeddak of Kaol, were two very different things.
Did she love Kulan Tith? Bravely she tried to believe that she did; but all the while her eyes wandered through the coming darkness for the figure of a clean-limbed fighting man black-haired and grey-eyed. Black was the hair of Kulan Tith; but his eyes were brown. It was almost dark when she found the entrance to the tunnel.
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