Lin Carter - Callisto 7 - Ylana Of Callisto

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Ylana of Callisto

By Lin Carter

Book I

AFTER THE VICTORY

Chapter 1

THE ETERNAL FEMININE

IT is one of the ironies of the human condition that only in the darkest of times do the brightest and

noblest traits of man come forth: endurance, courage, selfsacrifice.

I have seen this proved true in my own experience a thousand times, and I have observed it in the

experience of others.

As, for example, in the adventures which befell Ylana of the Jungle Country and young Tomar after the

fall of Kuur . . .

THE citadel of the Mind Wizards had fallen before the assault of the victorious warriors of golden

Shondakor, and Tharkol, and seacoast Soraba.

The mighty armada of flying ships had traversed the known surface of Thanator, had explored the

unknown mysteries of the Far Side of the planet, and had found at last the secret city of the Kuurians.

After a hard and desperate day-long battle, the warriors of the Three Cities had triumphed even over the

super-science of the yellow dwarfs and their amazing ability to control the minds of men. One by one the

cruel and cunning telepaths had been rooted out and cut down. Those they had taken captive were

released, and among these was Tomar of Shondakor, a youthful scion of the House of Valadon.

The lad had served aboard the sky-ship Jalathadar on her first expedition against Zanadar the City in the

Clouds, and had distinguished himself by his keen wits and youthful valor. The villainous Ulthar had

disabled the craft, hiding himself so cleverly aboard the former ship of the Sky Pirates that none could

find him. It had been Tomar who had stumbled upon the secret of his hiding-place and who had

succeeded in slaying the Zanadarian traitor in hand-to-hand combat, thereby saving the vessel and all its

crew.*

Thus had the boy first come to the attention of the high lords and royal courtiers of the Golden City,

among them Lukor of Ganatol, the peppery and sharp-tongued Swordmaster who had been one of my

first friends on the jungle Moon. Much later, the brave, handsome, serious youth had served during my

own ill-fated voyage against Kuur.** Further adventures include our being carried off together by the

rapacious bird-men, the Zarkoon, shortly after the fleet had flown over the Edge of the World into the

unknown hemisphere.

While prisoners in the hanging cages of the Zarkoon, Tomar and I had first made the acquaintance of

Ylana. The Jungle Maid was a daughter of a savage tribe which inhabited a hitherto unknown plateau to

the east of the Zarkoon country. She had fled from the cave-dwellings of her tribe, she told us, rather

than be forced into the arms of a brutal and repulsive warrior who had won her hand in marriage.

From this adventure we had managed to escape, but a whim of the inscrutable Fates decreed that our

paths should soon be sundered. For while I and Tomar were taken captive by the Mind Wizards of

Kuur, Ylana was rescued by my friends aboard the Xaxar, which had remained behind to search for

Tomar and me. The Jungle Maid had returned with them to Shondakor, and had taken her place aboard

the second mighty fleet of sky-ships during the final, triumphant expedition against Kuur.

And here is what happened to her, an adventure that I heard from her own lips and that I have set down

very much in her own words, although with certain attitudes and descriptions and interpolations of my

own added.

WHEN once the warriors descended into the Valley of Kuur amongst the towering Peaks of Harangzar,

surging down the long tunnel that led into the subterranean lair of the Mind Wizards, Ylana of the Jungle

Country was in the very forefront of them all.

For this expedition, the jungle Maid had reverted to the abbreviated costume she had worn in the wild,

discarding at last the long and clinging courtly gown my beloved Princess Darloona had arrayed her in

during her stay in Shondakor. Now the savage girl went clothed in her native dress-a brief garment of

supple hide, the skin of some jungle cat that inhabited her plateau homeland. This scant garment draped

around her slim hips, exposing her long, bare, golden legs, and stretched tightly over her small, nubile

breasts, leaving her tanned throat and shoulders bare. About her neck was clasped a crude necklace of

ivory fangs; a rough bracelet of hammered copper wire coiled about her upper arm. Her mane of

untrimmed dark hair streamed down her back, and her small feet were encased in highlaced buskins of

soft leather.

In her fists, the savage girl clenched long knives drawn from the twin scabbards bound with thongs to her

upper thighs. With these weapons she was singu. larly adroit. In the Jungle Country the children of men

do not long survive unless they are able to defend themselves against the dangerous predators who make

that jungle their lair. And, even though Ylana was the only daughter of Jugrid, the chief of the Cave

People, her folk were so close to the naked struggle for survival that she had been schooled in the arts of

the hunt and of war, as much as any boy of the clan.

I shall not repeat here the general account of the battle for Kuur, that furious onslaught of the swordsmen

of the Three Cities against the monstrous flesh robots of the Kuurians and the uncanny scienceweapons

of the yellow dwarflings. For of these things you may read in another place's . . . but a savage and

desperate conflict it was; the men of Soraba and Tharkol and golden Shondakor fought their way step by

step through the subterranean laboratories and chambers of the hidden citadel.

Ever Ylana pressed ahead, and by now the blades of her long knives were red with the gore of Kuurians

and their hideous slave monsters. The one overpowering desire in the heart of the savage girl was to find

the dungeons wherein were imprisoned the nobles and warriors who had survived the downfall of the first

invasion fleet. Among those were Koja the Yathoon, Lankar, my American friend, Princess Zamara,

Lukor of Ganatol, and, of course, I, Jandar. But of them all, the one captive foremost in the mind of

Ylana was the boy Tomar. As yet she did not know whether the brave youth still lived or had been slain

by the Mind Wizards. But she held in her heart a single ray of hope that he had survived the long days of

cruel imprisonment in the Pits of Kuur.

Something had sprung up between the earnest, serious, easily embarrassed young Shondakorian officer

and the savage girl during our adventures together after escaping from the Zarkoon bird-men. They were

nearly the same age-sixteen or seventeen, I would say, although it has always been difficult for me to tell

the ages of the people on this planet-and, although they came from different backgrounds, each had

glimpsed in the heart of the other that elusive and indescribable quality that calls a man to a woman

across all the world.

Bluff, burly Ergon joined Ylana in the final search, and little Taran, too, with the mighty form of Bozo the

othode at his side. That immense, faithful beast sniffed us out, and the iron strength of Ergon forced open

the doors to our cells, and one by one we emerged into the sourceless illumination that pervaded the Pits

of Kuur.

Ylana had eyes only for Tomar, and came quickly to his side. The boy was pale from his underground

imprisonment, and his garment was a mere scrap of rag wound about his loins. The rest of his body was

naked, and filthy from the primitive conditions in which he had endured the long weeks of his captivity.

But Ylana could see that he was whole and uninjured. A vast relief welled up within her heart, and

emotion so filled her that her great, dark, long-lashed eyes were suddenly lustrous with the brilliance of

unshed tears.

Her hand went out, tentatively, to touch him. Then, in the next moment, she turned what had been almost

a caress into an impudent poke in the ribs. The eternal perversity of the female heart reasserted itself in a

burst of mocking laughter.

"Wh-what's so funny?" blurted Tomar, crimsoning.

"You arel" the girl laughed, although closer to tears of relief than to honest mirth. She cocked a thumb at

his dirty face and lean ribs. "You were skinny and bony of knee even before," she said, grinning impishly.

"But look at you nowl I can count every rib! Captivity certainly doesn't agree with you."

The boy bit his lower lip in embarrassment. Then a reluctant grin tugged at the corners of his mouth.

Things, at last, were back to normal, thought To. mar to himself. He could not help but derive a certain

comfort from the notion, difficult as it was to stand there, awkward and dirty and almost naked, and face

her mischievous grin.

Chapter 2

FOOTPRINTS IN THE DUST

ALL about the two youngsters surged the fury of battle, for the attack on Kuur was at its height. The final

outcome of the struggle still hung in the balance and only time would tell whether the mad assault on the

citadel of the Mind Wizards would result in victory or defeat for the valiant warriors of the Three Cities.

Wasting but little time greeting my old friends and comrades, I, Jandar, swiftly marshaled the newly freed

captives into a fighting force, hoping to take the defenders of Kuur from the rear. Weapons we found

aplenty in the guardroom, and in less time than it would take me to describe, we were armed with

glittering longswords.

With my American friend, Lankar, at my side, and the giant othode who had given his heart to the

Earthling close behind, I led the assault against the rear of the citadel defenders. Most of the warriors

from the further hemisphere were still battling their way down through the tunnels, and it was slow going,

for the Mind Wizards had deployed their flesh robots in such a manner as to make the attackers pay

dearly for every hall and chamber taken.

We thrust against the rear of this bastion of living flesh, and at once became far too busy to think about

what might be happening to those at our own rear.

Had it not been so, I would have no tale to tell and this book would never have been written . . .

THE savage girl was armed, as already told, with twin knives, but Tomar bore a heavy-bladed,

cutlasslike sword which Ergon had handed him when the cache of weapons had been broken into and

distributed among the former captives.

The sword was not exactly to Tomar's liking, and thus, for a moment, he hesitated and remained behind,

although his every instinct clamored to join the fight. The blade was thick and difficult to wield, and in his

hands he feared it would make a clumsy weapon. Noticing his hesitation, and correctly interpreting the

cause thereof, Ylana offered him one of her long, thin, stilettolike knives. This offer the boy declined, not

wishing to deprive the jungle Maid of one-half of her arms. The girl tossed her curls impatiently, then

glanced thoughtfully at the further end of the hall.

"There was a storeroom of weapons at the fore of the cellblock," she remarked. "Perhaps there will be

another such at the rear. It's worth a try, and it will only take us a moment."

Tomar agreed and the two hurried to the far end of the stone-floored corridor. And there, indeed, they

found a similar room, long and narrow and highceilinged, whose walls were thickly hung with a variety of

weapons, including many kinds of swords, dirks, and spears with which they were both unfamiliar.

"If these are the weapons which the Kuurians stripped from their captives," the boy observed, as he

selected a slim-bladed rapier more fitted to one his size, and swished it back and forth for a moment to

try the weight and balance, "then the Mind Wizards must have taken hundreds of prisoners over the

years."

Ylana repressed a faint shudder of distaste.

"Our friends are even now battling against the re. suits of their misfortune in being captured by the little

yellow men," she said grimly.

Tomar gave her a questioning glance, then realized what the girl referred to. "The giant men . . . " he

murmured, a slight grimace of disgust on his features.

"Monsters would be a better name for them," the girl said. "Some of them have four arms, and none of

them are easy to killl"

Tomar nodded with distaste. "The Mind Wizards made them out of parts of their captives," the boy said

grimly. "They were cut apart and sewn together again, parts of one being added onto the bodies of

others. It's horrible . . . we thought that was probably how me were going to end up, too, once the little

fiends were finished gathering information from our memories . . ."

"How did they do that?" the girl inquired.

"They can listen to your thoughts just like you can listen to my voice," the boy replied. "And they can also

dig deeper into your mind and explore all of your memories. I don't quite understand it, myself, but that's

the way they are."

The girl shivered. "They don't sound-human," she said faintly. Then she added, "Come to think of it, they

don't exactly look human, either("

By this, Ylana probably referred to the dwarfish size and wrinkled, hairless skin of the Kuurians, which

was of a distinct lemon-yellow hue. No race remotely resembling the Kuurians had hitherto been known.

Nor, for that matter, had a blond, white-skinned race such as the jungle savages of Ylana's own tribe.

Their antecedents remained unknown, and this occurred to Tomar, but he thought it tactless to comment

upon it in the presence of the jungle Maid, and therefore held his tongue.

"What's this?" inquired the girl curiously, pointing to a hairline crack in the stone wall at the farther end of

the long, narrow storeroom.

"Looks like a door of some kind, cut into the rock," said Tomar, studying it. After a little tugging and

poking, the boy discovered the trick to opening it. Peering within, he saw nothing of interest, merely a

bare, stone-walled cubicle the size of a closet, empty of everything save for dust, which had settled

thickly upon the floor like a feathery carpet.

He shrugged. "An unused storage space, I guess. Let's go, Ylana, or the fight will be over before we get

a chance to blood our weapons."

"Mine are blooded already," the girl grinned, displaying her two knives, which were scummed with scarlet

from hilt to point. "But I'm willing to give you a chance to display your prowess-if anyl"

The boy flushed, but said nothing. He was accus. tomed by now to the girl's teasing, and could but rarely

think of a good rejoinder. He knew she was merely creating mischief, for during their earlier adventures

together there had been enough fighting.

Closing the stone slab that concealed the unused cubicle, he left the storeroom and the two went to join

their friends in the fight for freedom.

"There's one Mind Wizard I'd dearly love to meet up with," the boy said grimly, as they engaged battle at

one end of a row of warriors.

"Who's that?"

"Zhu Kor," Tomar said. "He was the creature who interrogated me and some of the others in my cell. . ."

The girl parried a sword stroke skillfully, and sank her other knife to its hilt in the bowels of her

opponent, who fell gasping. "Did he . . . torture you?" she asked in a faint whisper.

Tomar shook his head as his sword slashed air then enemy flesh.

"Not torture, exactly," the boy said slowly. "But to have someone else pawing through your mind,

fondling your memories, digging into secret places . . . well . . . it isn't fun, exactly."

Remembering the experience, he paled, then set his jaw resolutely, and redoubled his efforts to down

opponents. He fought furiously, his blade weaving a shimmering curtain of steel before him. It was as if he

fought Zhu Kor, instead of merely lumbering flesh robots.

Ylana asked no further questions. A mind-probe, she guessed, must be a distasteful violation of the most

private places of the mind, a sort of mental rape. The thought that this evil thing had been done to the boy

who now fought at her side, and whom she knew to be brave and manly and chivalrous, enraged her.

She bent to her work, and felt a glow of inward satisfaction when her flickering knives pierced the guard

of the creature she fought, and slit its throat from ear to ear. It was almost as if she were helping to

revenge the things done to the boy for whom she felt a certain fondness she was not always willing to

admit, even in the depths of her own heart.

Thereafter they were, both of them, much too busy for further words.

LATER, when the major resistance had been broken, Princess Zamara of Tharkol took charge of the

warriors engaged in clearing the Pits. Several of her officers had fought by her side during the pitched

battle, and to these she gave her orders. Among the young men was a member of a minor house of the

Tharkolian nobility named Kadar, who had shared a cell with Tomar. This lieutenant was only a year or

two older than Tomar himself.

Spotting his friend and former cellmate at the flank of the line, Kadar went over to where Tomar was

resting and suggested he check out the cellblock and adjacent storerooms to make certain none of the

Kuurians or their slaves were hidden in any of them.

"I'll go with him," said the tanned, dark-haired girl who sprawled wearily nearby. Kadar nodded, clapped

Tomar on one bare shoulder in comradely salute, passed on down the line, and had no cause until much

later to recall the brief exchange.

Tomar and Ylana had cleaned the gore off their blades, and the boy had taken up a baldric and empty

scabbard from the fallen. Sheathing his rapier therein, he set off on the search with the jungle Maid at his

side. '

They were weary from hours of battle, and both were hungry, but they had drunk deep of the

waterbottles that the Shondakorians had shared with the captives, passing the canteens down the line.

Tomar was somewhat depleted from the privations he had endured during the long weeks of his captivity,

but to have a sword in his hand again and an enemy to face is a marvelous stimulant to a former prisoner,

he had discovered.

The two searched through all of the cells without finding anyone hidden, and explored each of the

guardrooms, storerooms, and other chambers in the sector to which they had been assigned.

"This is a waste of time," Ylana complained as they completed their tour of the cellblock. "Far rather

would I be on the upper level with Prince Jandar. At least there might be some fighting to do up there!"

"We have not yet looked at the weapon room at the end of the row, you know, the one where I got my

sword."

"We've already checked it once," Ylana complained pettishly. "Why bother doing it again? We left it

empty, you may remember!"

"Yes, but we also left it unlocked," Tomar reminded her.

The girl tossed back her hair defiantly.

"Well, I'm not going to waste time searching a room I've already searched once," she snapped. "You may

fool around down here all you like, but I'm going up where there may still be some fighting! Are you

coming or aren't you?"

"I'll see you later," Tomar said. "I promised Kadar I would search thoroughly . . ."

The dark-haired girl sneered, eyes mirroring scorn.

"Oh, very well, then, I'll waste time with you," she grumbled. "But do hurry up, boy, or there won't be

any killing left to do!"

Tomar flushed at the tone of her voice, but set his jaw stubbornly. His sense of duty refused to allow him

the easy way out. Trying to ignore her pointed silence, and the mockery in her face, the youth looked

over the weapons storeroom and found it as empty as Ylana had said it would be.

"Satisfied now?" she challenged.

He flushed. "There is still the little stone room at the back," said he, embarrassedly.

"Oh, in the name of the Red Moon!" she stormed, stamping her little, buskin-shod foot impatiently. "You

simply hope that if you loiter long enough down here, you won't have to risk your skin against the last few

surviving enemies! Go ahead, then, look your fillbut I'm going!"

She turned on her heel, but at the door she paused, glancing back to see if he was following.

He was not. Tomar had pried open the stone slab that served the little closet for a door, and was peering

within. Suddenly he called her name. The urgency in his voice made her still the smart retort that rose to

her lips. Knife in hand, the jungle Maid came to peer over his shoulder where he crouched by the door,

keeping low so that what little light there was from the dim ceiling fixture could illuminate the dusty

cubicle.

"What is it?" the girl snapped. "There's no one here . . ."

"But there was, and not long since," the boy replied in low tones. "Look. . . 1"

She followed his pointing finger with her eyes, and suddenly she gasped.

"Footprints!" she breathed. For there before her, clearly visible, the marks of a sandaled foot could be

seen in the thick dust that mantled the stone floor.

"Yes," he said tensely. "And do you notice anything curious about them, beyond the simple fact that they

are there at all?"

She considered the view, then her eyes widened.

"There are only footprints going into the cubicle," she breathed faintly, excitement in her huge eyes.

"There are none leading out!"

The boy nodded. "Yes, and they end right there . . ."

He pointed again and again she looked.

The line of footprints ended in a blank wall of seemingly solid stone.

Chapter 3

AFTER THE BATTLE

WHILE these events were taking place in the gloomy caverns and tunnels beneath the floor of the Valley

of Kuur, other things were happening above ground which were to affect the fortunes of Ylana of the

Jungle Country and Tomar of Shondakor.

As resistance was crushed out in the underground citadel, one by one the warriors of the Three Cities

emerged again into the open air to rest, partake of food and drink, report to the command post, and

accept new assignments. Many were wounded, for, while the telepathic dwarves were not themselves

fighters, they controlled a slave-force of indomitable soldiery in their will-less zombies. These were

tenacious, utterly fearless, and therefore remarkably difficult to kill. But they were not invulnerable, and

one by one they were overcome.

The Valley of Kuur was a bleak, desolate region of dry, sterile sands where nothing lived or grew.

Meandering through the center of the long valley, which was walled to the north and to the south by tall

mountains, glided in sinuous curves a stream of cold, black waters known as Dragon River. Above, the

golden skies of Thanator were hidden by impenetrable mists. These, however, proved at length to be

artificial, rather than natural. For as the ranks of the Mind Wizards were diminished by each death, the

barrier of blurring mists began to dissipate, to become more transparent by infinitely fine gradations of

light.

Finally, about three hours after the attack on Kuur had begun, the mist-barrier was completely dispersed,

and the healthy light of open day shone gloriously down upon the dominion of the Mind Wizards for the

first time in many years.

"Amazing, truly amazing," puffed Dr. Abziz, the fussy, self-important, little master-geographer of Soraba.

"I -would have sworn those clouds were a natural phenomenon, albeit that their oddly stationary quality

made their naturalness somewhat suspect, due to the high winds and furious updrafts of the mountainous

region in which the vale is situated."

"There seems to be no question about it," commented the Earthling, Prince Lankar. "We know for

certain, at this point, that the clouds were an illusion, generated by long-range telepathy. . ."

"Aye, yer lordship," rascally little Glypto piped up in his rasping tones, "even as were that illusion what

masked the door to Kuur itself, right over there in they great cliffs-the which were not good enough to

fool the nose of yon hulking beast at yer side!"

Crouched at the Earthling's feet, Bozo, the mighty othode whose heart Lankar had won, and who had

accompanied the Earthman all the way from the trackless jungles of the Grand Kumala to the gray shores

of Dragon River, raised his ferociously ugly head to have the loose purple fur behind his ears scratched. It

was as if the faithful brute, reminded of his important part in finding the hidden entrance to Kuur, signified

his willingness to accept yet further thanks in the form of a caress from the hand of the Earthman upon

whom he had bestowed all the doglike devotion of his bottomless heart.

The door to Kuur in truth stood visible, a triangular opening cut in the smooth stone of the cliffs that ran

for some distance along the borders of the black river. Once it had been cunningly concealed by

telepathic illusion, masked by a thought-projection which made it seem that the opening was but a solid

continuation of the stony surface. Now it yawned blackly open in the clear, golden light, and through it

emerged warriors by the score, the uninjured assisting their wounded comrades.

"Pass that there bottle o' quarra back here again, neighborl" said Glypto of Tharkol. "An' let me an' his

lordship here sample atween us what little be left after yer guzzlin'."

The fat little geographer flushed guiltily, his scarlet visage assuming an even deeper shade. Brusquely, he

handed the bottle over and Glypto upended it, his head tilted aloft, and his two companions watched as

the Adam's-apple bobbed up and down, up and down, as a truly prodigious draft of the fiery, brandylike

beverage poured down that scrawny throat.

"Ahhh," breathed the rascally little guttersnipe, finishing his drink. "That do cut th' dust, it truly do! Here

we go, yer lordship, take aboard a little more o' this-here Soraban Courage. We have surely earned our

quarra with this day's work, I warrant, and among them prodigious deeds o' valor these eyes o' mine 'aye

seen terday, not the least o' 'em were committed by yerself, armed with that-there great staff, aye, and

the burly brute at yer side!"

The Earthling smiled, thinking back over the day's fighting. For a fortyish and quite sedentary author, used

to little more physical exertion than it takes to walk a dog down the streets of a Long Island town of an

evening, he felt comfortably weary. True, there were aches in every muscle, and a knee that would limp a

bit for a week or two, and a cut on the back of one wrist that would leave an ugly white scar, never to

fade, remaining a permanent souvenir of the battle for Kuur and his slight role in it; but on the whole, it

had been an exciting adventure.

He had described sword-fights in a score of novels, had Lankar of Callisto. But this was the first time he

had ever been in one!

TOWARD the center of the beach I, Jandar, stood in conversation with Zantor and Thuron and the two

other captains of the flying galleons of the armada, the Zarkoon and the Avenger. I was just suggesting to

my officers that it might be wise to leave a fair-sized force of fighting-men here behind in Kuur, to make

certain we had this nest of vipers cleared out. Zantor looked past me to the doorway cut in the rock.

"Here comes Lukor with the death-roster," the former Sky Private and Zanadarian gladiator observed.

The spry and nimble little Ganatolian masterswordsman came up to where we stood, bearing in one fist a

scrap of parchment. The other hand held a slimbladed rapier, dyed crimson with gore from hilt to point.

He saluted with the blade carelessly.

"How goes the count now, Master Lukor?" inquired Zantor in his deep, somber voice.

"Fair enough, my Admiral," Lukor smiled cheerfully. "I have myself examined the corpses, and no fewer

than thirteen of the yellow devils are accounted for."

"I gather your total does not include the naked brain in the case, slain by the boy Taran, or the one in the

floating chair struck down by Prince Lankar's othode," Zantor mused.

"Quite right," the silver-haired master-swordsman nodded. "That raises the total of dead Mind Wizards

to fifteen. You said there were only seventeen of the fiends in all, lad?"

I shook my head, thoughtfully.

"Sixteen," I corrected him. "Bozo the othode slew one at Gates of Kuur just before Lankar was

captured. That means there is only one Kuurian left alive. . ."

"Well, lad, he's down there in that nasty warren somewhere, and our men will smoke him out ere long,"

Lukor said.

"Let's hope so," I remarked wearily. "We'll not be able to rest easy until the last of them is dead and the

entire race has been exterminated. What about the flesh robots? Are all of them dead?"

"A half-dozen were taken alive, the poor creatures) Better if they had gone down fighting, for I doubt

their minds can ever be restored to them. Mayhap we had best put the unfortunate creatures out of their

misery. . ."

"Well, we can decide on that later," I shrugged. It was not a decision I was looking forward to making. I

am perfectly willing to kill men in battle, when they are my enemies, but to cut down men in cold blood is

a bit more than I can comfortably stomach. I am a warrior, not an executioner. Still, there was probably

nothing else to do with them. If we didn't give the zombielike former servitors of the Mind Wizards a

quick, clean death by the sword, they would die lingeringly and horribly later on from starvation, for I

doubted the flesh robots could tend to themselves without mental commands. The Kuurians had

destroyed their will entirely, whether by drugs or surgery or telepathic means, I don't know.

Just then Prince Valkar of Shondakor, my nephewin-law, if there is such a term (and there was, on

Thanator at least, for the denizens of this world have an extremely complex system of genealogy, to

which they adhere scrupulously), came striding up to the command post where we stood talking.

With him was Koja the Yathoon, the tall, chitinclad, insect-man who had been the first friend I ever made

on the jungle Moon, and also Zamara of Tharkol, our royal ally, who was disheveled, and flushed, clad in

tattered scraps of a once-gorgeous gown, with a scratch on her cheek and a smudge on her nose, and

her long black hair floating about her exquisitely beautiful face in complete disarray. For all that, she

looked like the proverbial cat that ate the canary. A glance at the dripping sword she held carelessly in

one hand-a weapon she had wielded with remarkable dexterity and obvious grim pleasure-told me why.

The proud and fiery Princess of Tharkol had been busy exacting a little personal revenge for the

discomforts she had endured as a captive of the Mind Wizards. With her were two young officers, her

own lieutenant, Karan, and one of mine, a fellow called Sojan.

We greeted them, and Valkar inquired as to my instructions on the disposal of the captured Kuurian

weapons and instruments.

"We have thus far discovered an entire armory of the hand-weapons and the gas-receptacles," he

explained, by the latter term referring to the containers of sleep-gas the defenders of the underground city

had employed so effectively.

I told him they should all be destroyed, and the equipment in the Kuurian laboratories, too. "The devilish

science of the Mind Wizards must die with the last of their race," I said. "Never again must these devices

be used against our kingdoms."

"I agree," said Zamara. "The warriors of Thanator need no devil-magic to defend their cities against

whatever foes shall rise to threaten us in the future. Our gallant fighting men have proved here this day

that simple courage, armed with simple steel, can overwhelm even the evil science of Kuur. Let

everything be destroyedl"

"Yes, but not until we have all left the caverns," I added. "Some of the laboratories may contain deadly

poisons or acids or powerful explosives. See to this, will you, Lukor?"

He accepted the responsibility with evident pleasure, but spoke up to suggest that a small force remain

behind after the departure of the main fleet to make certain of things.

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YlanaofCallistoByLinCarterBookIAFTERTHEVICTORYChapter1THEETERNALFEMININEITisoneoftheironiesofthehumanconditionthatonlyinthedarkestoftimesdothebrightestandnoblesttraitsofmancomeforth:endurance,courage,selfsacrifice.Ihaveseenthisprovedtrueinmyownexperienceathousandtimes,andIhaveobserveditintheexperien...

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Lin Carter - Callisto 7 - Ylana Of Callisto

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