Lin Carter - Callisto 5 - Mind Wizards Of Callisto

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Jandar 5: Mind Wizards of Callisto

By Lin Carter

Book One

THE QUEST FOR KUUR

Chapter 1

The Mystery of the Mind Wizards

When you have an enemy, you cannot rest in peace until you have destroyed him.

This is one of the great laws of life, and it holds as true for individual men

as for nations.

As a warrior by inclination, a fighting-man by profession, I have made this

dictum a part of my personal philosophy. And nothing that has ever chanced to

occur in my long career of wandering and adventure has ever proved this belief

an error.

And now we had indeed an enemy! An enemy secretive and furtive, shadowy and

hidden, unscrupulous and insidious. There was no course open to men of courage

and honor but to seek out the hidden lairs of that enemy and destroy him

before he brought his cunning schemes to fruition and destroyed us.

In the years since I first found myself miraculously transported across the

gulf of millions of miles of space by some mysterious agency to this strange

and marvelous world, I have allied myself with a people called the Ku Thad.

They are a brave and stalwart and freedom-loving nation of heroic and

noble-hearted warriors, and the seat of their power is the great city of

Shondakor the Golden, which arises amidst the Plains of Haratha on the River

Ajand.

To their princess, the fair Darloona, I have given my allegiance and my heart.

And-by a miracle even more wondrous and inexplicable than that which so

strangely transported me to this unknown and beautiful planet-I succeeded in

winning her heart as well.

It is a miracle I will never completely manage to understand. That I, a

wandering young adventurer from a far-off world, should have won the love of

the most beautiful princess of two planets, remains and shall ever remain a

mystery beyond the scope of my comprehension. It seems to me that I am a very

ordinary young man, no braver or more handsome or more exceptional in any way

than any other of a thousand young men. But my beloved saw in me some rare and

precious quality that remains invisible to my own scrutiny, and chose me for

her mate from all others.

It is no mere false modesty on my part to say that this marvel remains

inexplicable to me, for I am no more humble or self-effacing than most men. It

is simply, I think, that few men really deserve the wonderful gift of the

heart of a lovely and noble woman. Once that gift has been bestowed upon us,

we thereafter must spend the rest of our lives earning and deserving that

gift.

However, against all odds, I had won through a world of perils to a place

beside the Princess of the Golden City and had made her mine. Her kingdom,

which now I shared as Prince Jandar of Shondakor, I have held firm against a

host of enemies. Mere months before, the city of Tharkol, ruled by the mad

queen Zamara, had launched an insidious assault against our realm. Armed with

a secret weapon of immense power, the self-styled "Empress of Callisto" had

sought to subjugate the Golden City of the Ku Thad as the first step on her

ambitious program of planetary conquest. She had caught us by surprise, taking

as her prisoners my princess and myself, as well as our staunch ally and

comrade, the burly Perushtarian warrior, Ergon.

In a bewildering sequence of remarkable events, we had been able to turn the

tables on Zamara, carrying her off into the wilderness of the Great Plains,

safely eluding recapture by the Tharkolians until narrowly managing to rejoin

our own comrades.

And then had come a sequence of revelations so unexpected and surprising, that

the entire history of this jungle-girdled world would forever after be changed

because of them.

For Zamara was not truly mad, it proved, but had been seduced into her gaudy

dreams of world conquest by an insidious band of telepaths who dwelt in a

secret citadel in a far-off land, from which hidden fortress they worked to

the destruction of the free cities of Thanator.

Once the full truth became known, Zamara was overcome by contrition and

labored mightily to undo the damage she had done. From our most powerful enemy

she became our staunchest ally, adding the armed might of her own warlike

realm to the fighting legions of the Ku Thad in a mighty effort to throw down

the power of our true enemy, the Mind Wizards of Kuur.

In this great crusade upon which we were shortly to embark, a second ally lent

us his strength. This was the redoubtable and cunning Seraan of Soraba, a

merchant city to the north on the shores of Corund Laj the Greater Sea,

Kaamurath by name. His city-state had been next on Zamara's agenda of world

dominance; apprised of this, the clever Prince Kaamurath had insinuated his

master-spy, Glypto, into the city of Tharkol. It had been Glypto who was

instrumental in freeing us from Zamara's captivity, after we had been taken

prisoner in a daring Tharkolian raid.

Soraba is a part of the wealthy Perushtarian empire to the north. They are not

a warlike people, the Perushtarians, but a nation of tradesmen and merchants.

In the past, when internecine strife broke out between the several cities of

their empire, the Perushtarians had been wont to hire the services of an

immense mercenary army called the Chac Yuul, the Black Legion. But those days

were over and gone, and in recapturing the kingdom of my beloved princess from

the clutches of her enemies, I had taken a part in the overthrow of the Chac

Yuul. Broken and dispersed, the warrior host had since vanished from the great

stage of world events and no longer played any major role in the history of

the Jungle Moon.

Hence the wily Kaamurath had been forced to rely upon his own resources in

defending his realm from the ambitions of Zamara of Tharkol. Disguising

himself as the merchant Shaphur, he had led a caravan of warriors, also

disguised, to reconnoiter the situation, and we had fallen in with him after

effecting our escape from Tharkol.

In time all of these matters had come to their resolution. And when at length

it became known that a secret agent of the hidden fortress of telepaths-the

"Mind Wizards," they styled themselves-had in fact been the power behind

Zamara's throne, a fact cleverly concealed from everyone, including Zamara, it

became grimly obvious to the sovereigns of Shondakor, Tharkol and Soraba that

we should never be permitted to enjoy peace until we had rooted out and

destroyed this secret nest of telepathic magicians who worked, and had worked

behind the scenes for many years, to overthrow the kingdoms of Thanator.

It was some months after our return from these hazardous adventures that we

prepared to embark on our crusade against the Mind Wizards of Thanator.

For that time we had labored mightily in preparation for this expedition. In

our attack against the Mind Wizards, we had determined that speed was the

essential factor.

Only one hemisphere of this planet is known to us. Thanator, or Callisto, is

one of the moons of Jupiter. The astronomers of my native Earth will doubtless

argue that Callisto is too small a world to sustain a breathable atmosphere,

and too distant from the Sun for its surface to be warm and fertile, much less

tropic. With these learned teachings I cannot argue: all I can say is that I,

Jon Dark, have dwelt upon this world for months, and that I still live and

breathe and feel the warmth of a tropic daylight upon my flesh.

I expect no one to believe the amazing narrative of my adventures, for I can

offer no tangible proof of their veracity to offset the calculations of

astronomers. I suspect, merely, that the sages and scientists of my native

Earth have yet to unriddle most of the secret mysteries of the Universe . . .

and that the inexplicable existence of intelligent life upon the surface of

the Jungle Moon is but one of those mysteries.

How I traveled here I can neither explain nor even understand. And why I

continue to set down with a reed pen on papyrus this continuing narrative of

marvels remains a puzzle even to myself. At periods a volume of these memoirs

is transported through the jungles of the Grand Kumala by a picked war-party

of fighting-men in my retinue to a mysterious jade disc which is the site of

the Callistan terminus of a peculiar subspatial link between our two worlds.

Who built this marker I cannot conjecture-what unseen and superior

intelligence maintains this Gateway between the worlds is still a mystery even

to myself. And whether these memoirs do indeed retrace the route I traveled

years before, to materialize at the bottom of a jade-lined well in the central

plaza of the Lost City of Arangkor in the trackless and unexplored jungles of

southern Cambodia I dare not even guess.

The fact that human beings no different from my fellow Earthlings dwell upon a

distant planet seems to me a fact of astounding importance to the future of

mankind. It behooves me to pass along to my fellow Americans some record of

the marvels and mysteries I have encountered here. If any eye but my own shall

ever peruse these pages I cannot ever hope to know. Perhaps these memoirs go

astray when they vanish up that pulsing beam of golden light that forms at

random intervals within the jade Gateway . . . perhaps they wander forever in

the far places of the Universe, a Universe whose vastness and many mysteries

and inexplicable secrets I am only beginning to comprehend.

Or, perchance they molder into decay in a forgotten city of crumbling stone

that has been lost for unknown ages in the midst of the Cambodian jungles.

I do not know; probably, I shall never know.

But write them I shall, hoping that across the vastness of some three hundred

and eighty-seven million, nine hundred and thirty thousand miles they will

somehow come into hands of men able to read them and to appreciate the

transcendent significance of the information they contain.

To those readers, then-if any-I now speak. Doubtless to you my narrative of

marvels and adventures upon a distant world will seem no more than an

extravagant fiction. Sobeit. Read and ponder well; the decision of my veracity

is yours to make. And stop to think: if this is nothing but mere fiction, then

I must surely be the most gifted romancer in all the annals of fantastic

literature since Edgar Rice Burroughs. For only an author of his great

imaginative genius could concoct so weird and marvelous a world as Thanator,

and make it real and living on the page.

Then pause to consider: would any author, able to invent such a stirring and

vivid narrative, thronged with wonders, leave so many questions unanswered, so

many mysteries unsolved?

Somewhere on the further hemisphere of Callisto, yet unknown to us, the secret

citadel of the Mind Wizards lay hidden.

But-where?

Callisto is not a small world. It measures nearly three thousand miles in

diameter, which makes it, with Ganymede and Titan, one of the largest

satellites in the Solar System-so large, in fact, that at the very dawn of the

science of astronomy, the great Galileo was able to discover it by means of

the small, crude lenses available to him. We are talking, therefore, of

something in the neighborhood of twenty-four million square miles.*

And-where in all this twenty-four million square miles might the lair of the

Mind Wizards be found?

Only the one hemisphere of Callisto is known to us and has been mapped by the

cartographers of Thanator: the hemisphere which contains the Corund Laj, the

Grand Kumala, the White Mountains, the Great Plains of Haratha, and the Sanmur

Laj, or Lesser Sea, as well as the cities of Shondakor, Tharkol, Soraba, Farz,

Narouk, Ganatol and Perushtar, and, formerly, Zanadar.

The opposite hemisphere is completely unknown. And we had good reasons to

suspect that the hidden lair of the Mind Wizards lay in the trackless

wilderness of this second hemisphere.

But again-where?

Luckily, we possessed two slender clues to the whereabouts of the secret

citadel.

During the desperate attempt of the Ku Thad to recapture their city from the

clutches of the Black Legion two years ago, I had been forced to fight to the

death against the cunning devil-priest, Ool the Uncanny, in the Pits below

Shondakor, in order to rescue my comrades Koja of the Yathoon Horde and Lukor,

the gallant and peppery little master-swordsman from Ganatol, who had been

taken prisoner by the Chac Yuul.

At that time, and before our duel ended in his death, the clever little

warlock who had been the mastermind behind the Black Legion, the power behind

the throne of its leader, Arkola, had boastfully revealed to me some hint of

the hiding place of his fellow Mind Wizards.

His words are burnt indelibly into my memory. Well do I recall that harrowing

hour in which for the first time I matched swords against an adversary who

could read my mind like an open book, and knew a split second in advance where

my next stroke would fall.

Only by sheer chance had Ool been overcome and slain. But in his

overconfidence, sure of his victory over me, he gloatingly let slip some small

clue as to the location of the mysterious Mind Wizards.

Smirking in oily anticipation of his triumph over me in the deadly game of

blade against blade, he had boasted to me, there in dank and gloomy dungeons,

and his words remain in my memory to this hour-

1 am one of the Mind Wizards of Kuur, dark shadowy Kuur that lies beyond the

Dragon River amid the Peaks of Harangzar, on the other side of Thanator. My

people share a curious science, a mental discipline that permits us to read

the thoughts and minds of other beings . . . We are a small, a dying race; but

we have a mighty power over the minds of other men, a power which, if used

adroitly, can lay an empire within our reach.

Because of these words which Ool had incautiously let slip in the moment

before he inadvertently tripped over the corpse of Bluto which lay sprawled

out behind him, and fell, shattering his skull against the pave, gave us our

first precious clue to the whereabouts of the land of Kuur. It was in the

second hemisphere, near a river amidst the mountains: that much, at least, we

knew.

Our second clue had lain in our hands for months, but had somehow or other

gone unrecognized all that time until the sharp eyes and keen wits of old

Zastro, the wise sage of the Ku Thad and one of our most trusted councillors,

discerned its hidden meaning.

It was in the form of a small circular medallion of precious metal which Ergon

had found about the neck of Ang Chan, another Kuurian, a second Mind Wizard,

who had been the power behind Zamara's throne and the mastermind behind her

mad scheme of world conquest, even as Ool had skulked and whispered in the

shadows of the mighty warlord, Arkola.

There aboard Zamara's great warship, as a flying vessel of Shondakor closed in

battle with it, Ang Chan had fallen to a chance-flung dagger wielded by Zamara

herself, hurled at the wily mastermind by the outraged princess in the

terrible moment in which she had at last discovered how the yellow dwarf had

manipulated her thoughts to obey the bidding of the far-off Mind Wizards.

The medallion bore a seemingly meaningless inscription, curved and ragged

lines gathering about a triangular symbol. The disc contained no message that

was legible to me at the time, so I thrust it within my garments for later

examination and promptly forgot all about it.

Chapter 2

Secret in Silver

In the great Hall of the royal palace of Shondakor were we assembled for the

council of war.

Once the grinning idol of Hoom, devil god of the Chac Yuul, had leered down

upon the splendid hall, squatting like a huge, obscene toad atop the dais of

many steps.

Now the Twin Thrones stood upon that high place beneath a billowing canopy of

cloth of gold, the thrones wherefrom Darloona and I were wont to preside over

state functions.

At the foot of those stairs a great table of carven stone was set and many

gilt chairs were drawn about this table, whose top was littered with books and

documents, scrolls and charts.

At the head of this table I sat, as Prince of the Golden City. To my right sat

Zamara, Princess of Tharkol, and to my left, the gross bulk of Kaamurath,

Seraan of Soraba. At lower places about the table sat the lords and chieftains

and courtiers of the Ku Thad realm-handsome and courageous Prince Valkar,

majestic Lord Yarrak, the solemn-eyed arthropod Koja, and Lukor of Ganatol,

and many another brave and stalwart ally, not the least among them, in our

reverence and esteem, being the aged and silver-haired Zastro, the sage and

philosopher of the Shondakorian realm.

Only my princess was absent from our council, but the voice of motherhood has

a higher call at times than do the demands of statecraft. And our infant son,

but newly born, loudly and insistently required her presence more needfully

than did we.

For months we had labored, three cities in concord, to mount the greatest

expedition of war ever launched across the face of this world-or, at least,

the greatest known to our annals.

Since the destruction of the Sky Pirates of Zanadar, Shondakor alone of all

the cities of the Jungle Moon possessed a fleet of the fantastic flying

galleons wherewith the cruel corsairs of the City in the Clouds had long

harassed the other kingdoms of Thanator. From our successful battle against

Zanadar we had borne away two of the mighty ornithopters, the Jalathadar and

the Xaxar.

But in the interval since the fall of Zanadar, and all unknown to us, the

cunning Mind Wizards had moved in secret to arm the warlike Tharkolians with

the flying ships-a secret weapon with which the self-styled Empress Zamara had

planned the conquest of Thanator, never dreaming that she was but a tool in

the hands of the Mind Wizards.

To Zamara's able craftsmen and artisans, the agent of the Mind Wizards, Ang

Chan, had delivered the secret formulae and techniques whereby the amazing sky

warships were built and rendered weightless. Carefully working in secret, the

Tharkolians had completed two such aerial contrivances, which they had

christened Empress and Conqueress. These two galleons of the clouds were the

prototypes of a yet mightier number that would, it had been planned, form the

greatest sky navy in the history of the planet, and which would subjugate the

many kingdoms of Thanator to the rule of Zamara.

In the months since we had defeated the imperial ambitions of Ang Chan of Kuur

and had won the contrite Zamara of Tharkol to our side, we of the Three Cities

had labored tirelessly to prepare for the great expedition against the secret

citadel of the Mind Wizards.

The bravest warriors, the noblest fighting-men, the most skillful archers and

swordsmen of three kingdoms had trained unwearyingly for their duties aboard

the combined fleets of Shondakor and Tharkol. The finest intellects in three

realms had pooled their wisdom to our aid; cartographers and scholars,

geographers and explorers, had combined efforts to scrape together what few

morsels of information or rumor, legend or hearsay, could be found concerning

the unknown far side of the planet. The finest maps, the most detailed and

reliable charts, had been compiled. They were the end result of months of

discussion and research, the sifting of evidence and the comparison of

knowledge. But these charts fell pitifully short of accuracy or detail. If we

entered the skies of the unknown far side of Thanator armed only with these

charts, we should be flying blind into an unknown and mysterious world. We

might well consume months-years-in combing many thousands of square miles, in

search of our uncharted destination.

At the culmination of a lengthy series of meetings, the final discovery came

to light. During these councils we had painstakingly gathered together every

minuscule scrap of data we possessed concerning the Mind Wizards. I had racked

my brains for every tiniest bit of information I had learned from my brief

association with Ool during my incognito tour of duty among the warriors of

the Black Legion, and I had ransacked my memory to reconstruct, as accurately

as possible, every word he had ever spoken in my hearing.

Princess Zamara did precisely the same, setting down for the scribes to copy

out everything she knew or remembered about Ang Chan, and striving to recall

every word, the text of every single conversation she had ever had with the

yellow dwarf. We combed over this accumulation of material, searching for

clues, but found little that was of any use to us.

As well, we examined minutely the contents of Ang Chan's suite back in

Tharkol, fetched hither in the Empress. I don't know precisely what we had

hoped to find-perhaps a letter, a map, a book, some kind of document that

might indicate the location of the hidden lair of the Mind Wizards.

And then I recalled the curiously-inscribed disc Ergon had taken from about

the neck of Ang Chan as he lay dying in the cabin of Zamara's flying ship. At

the time I had slipped this item into my pouch, vaguely planning to examine it

later, which was something I had completely forgotten to do in the interim.

The pouch still lay in a cupboard in my dressing room. I sent a servant to

find it and displayed the thing before the council.

It was a smallish disc of some heavy, slick metal resembling silver. One side

was smooth and blank, but the other was engraved with an odd design or pattern

of curved and wavy lines which made no particular sense to me. It looked like

this:

We passed the small silver medallion around the table, examining it one by

one. No one could make anything in particular of it, until it came into the

hands of wise old Zastro. He peered at it thoughtfully, then called for the

document in which I had caused to be transcribed the several passages of

dialogue which had passed between Ool and myself during the time I had served

(under a false name) in the retinue of Prince Vaspian of the Black Legion. He

slowly read aloud that particular information concerning the location of Kuur

which Ool had let slip during our battle in the Pits.

When he raised his lined and weary face, his eyes gleamed bright with youthful

zest and excitement.

"Do you not grasp the meaning of it, my lords?" he inquired.

Gallant old Lukor sniffed impatiently.

"I, for one, do not, friend Zastro," he said. "'Tis but a bauble, scribbled

with a meaningless design, to my way o' thinking!"

"Then why should he wear it concealed in the bosom of his garments?" Zastro

asked, gently.

Lukor wrinkled up his brow.

"Mayhap because it was precious to him-how can we guess?"

Zastro nodded slowly, silver beard gleaming in the shafts of brilliant day

which fell athwart the table through tall windows.

"And perhaps we can guess why it was so valuable to him," he said. "We may

assume that this Ang Chan was not intended to remain forever at the court of

Tharkol, but would eventually, once his mission was concluded, have made his

way back to his unknown homeland. Exactly how he would have effected this

journey I cannot guess-nor does it particularly matter. But it seems to me

that he would have had to keep about him, against that moment of need, some

way of telling how to get home again across half the world. Is this not

reasonable to expect?"

We all nodded or murmured acquiescence. Koja eyed the old sage with his solemn

and inscrutable gaze.

"Are we to assume that you profess to see a map of some kind in the scribble

on the reverse of the medallion?" he inquired in his harsh monotone.

The old man smiled gently.

"That is precisely the case!" he said. "Consider-Ang Chan could not have known

precisely when it would become necessary for him to make his return journey.

His return might have waited upon the successful termination of his mission,

or it might have come about quite suddenly-for example, if his identity had

unexpectedly been exposed."

"There is sense in what you say, Zastro; speak on," Lord Yarrak bade, his eyes

alive with keen interest.

"He might have been many leagues distant from his suite in the palace, absent

from Tharkol on a mission for his queen, when the time for return came. Thus,

would it not be reasonable for us to expect he would keep somewhere about his

person at all times the means whereby to find his path back across half a

world to shadowy and hidden Kuur? Now, for a man to keep a book about his

person, or a pouch of papers, much less a folded parchment map, would be to

arouse suspicions in all he met and to risk the loss of the return-chart in

any one of a thousand ways."

"Such as?" Zamara asked skeptically.

"Why, such as theft. A thief, brushing against him in the street-a burglar,

robbing his apartment while he bathed-a fire breaking out suddenly, making it

impossible for him to escape with aught but his life. But suppose, foreseeing

these eventualities, he caused a miniature map to be engraved upon a bit of

ordinary jewelry which he could wear upon his person at every moment of the

day or night, waking or sleeping . . ."

"You mean-the medallion?" I said.

He nodded, smilingly, then traced with a careful hand a replica of the

seemingly meaningless tangle of curved lines on a large sheet of blank

parchment, and held it up for the rest of us to see.

"Now, observe this long line that threads its curving way through the midst of

the design," he said, indicating it with his forefinger. "Prince Jandar has

told us that Ool the Uncanny mentioned that the lair of the Mind Wizards was

`beyond the Dragon River.' This line in particular catches my attention, not

only because the small triangular mark is situated just beyond it, but because

it is unlike the wavy lines that enclose it. The line coils and undulates like

a serpent . . . and it may be because of that similarity that the Kuurians

call it `Dragon River."'

We stared intently at the replica of the miniature chart, listening in utter

silence as the old man spoke.

"Now, as for these regularly wavy lines which. we see both above and below and

to the right of the serpentine line, they suggest to me nothing more or less

than a stylized way of indicating mountain ridges on a map. Some

cartographers, you know, sketch in miniature drawings of mountains, others

prefer to illustrate the natural features on a map with some manner of

conventional design. These wavy lines, then, could well represent the major

ridges of the mountains which Ool the Uncanny called `the Peaks of

Harangzar."'

"Go on," Prince Valkar urged.

"I believe that this triangular mark represents the secret citadel of the Mind

Wizards. It may represent a single pyramidal building, or the entrance to a

subterranean cavern system, a castle, or even a city. We have no way of

telling that in advance, and shall not be able to make certain until we are on

the spot."

He put the replica chart down on the table and beamed upon us his serene,

saintly smile.

"The most amusing thing about this humble discovery of mine," he said, "is

that I should not have been able to make these guesses if we did not have the

vital clue Prince Jandar had already given us. Possessing this verbal

information about the mountains and the river, it becomes possible to make

sense out of a map deliberately designed to look like a meaningless scribble.

And, of course, the Mind Wizards could not have known what Ool the Uncanny had

let slip in his conversation with the prince, that time they dueled to the

death there in the Pits. Either bit of information is completely useless

without possession of the other; possessing both, we should find it remarkably

easy to find the location of Kuur."

Fat, moon-faced Kaamurath of Soraba had lolled wheezing in his chair

throughout this, sucking noisily on sweetmeats, his bright, quick little eyes

fixed unswervingly on Zastro's face. Now, for the first time, he spoke in his

high, breathy voice.

"This personage is not entirely certain he follows the meaning of the

admirable sage of the Ku Thad," he said politely. "We still have half a world

to search, do we not? And we must still cover many hundreds or even thousands

of korads before we can hope to find the hiding place of the despicable Mind

Wizards?"

Zastro smiled again. "Yes, but the Seraan forgets how rapidly the ornithopters

cover ground; and how easy it will be to find a river that curves with this

precise configuration. Besides, we will be looking for mountains. On this

hemisphere of Thanator, only two mountain ranges of any particular size or

importance break the flatness of the land-surface, the White Mountains of the

Sky Pirates to the north of the Grand Kumala, and the Black Mountains of the

Yathoon Horde to the south. The land-surface of Thanator is not extremely

extensive; it is nowhere near the size of Prince Jandar's home-world, whereon,

he informs me, many score of major mountain ranges arise in six or seven

different continental masses. No, sire, we shall find it easy to search from

the air, investigate only the mountains, and we shall look for a river of this

configuration. Besides, we have one further important geographical clue on the

medallion which as yet I have not mentioned."

"And what may that be?" the Seraan wheezed.

"This mountain at the end of the river, which is larger than any of the

others, and whose crest seems to be cloven into three distinct peaks. That

would seem to be a very distinctive landmark, and one we can hardly fly over,

or near, without noticing. It would seem to be the mountain in which the

headwaters of the Dragon River rise. It narrows our search considerably."

And so the council determined that Zastro had indeed hit upon the secret of

the medallion, and the location of shadowy Kuur was at last known to us.

We all felt jubilant over the discovery, and more eager than ever to launch

our expedition against the homeland of the Mind Wizards.

As for myself, I felt a certain chagrin-mingled, it must be admitted, with wry

humor.

For five months we had searched our wits and racked our brains for the secret

of the location of Kuur.

And for five months I had-quite literally-been carrying it around in my

pocket!

Chapter 3

Shondakor, Farewell!

Once the keen perception of Zastro had penetrated the mystery to its core, and

we knew that we possessed, at very least, a vital clue to the location of

Kuur, events moved rapidly towards our departure.

We would of course employ the sky navy of Shondakor for this purpose. There

was never really any question but that we would fly to the secret fortress of

the Mind Wizards. The ingenious and remarkable winged galleons invented by the

Sky Pirates of Zanadar could traverse the globe far swifter than any army,

mounted on thaptors or borne in chariots drawn by those ungainly, hippo-like

draft-animals the Thanatorians call the glymph. True, the number of armed

warriors and supplies we could transport by ornithopter was strictly limited,

whereas by land we could move as large a host of fighting-men as we might care

to assemble: but speed was of the essence, and the element of surprise in our

attack might prove the single factor that would tip the scales of destiny

towards victory rather than defeat.

And so the sky navy was made ready. Perhaps the term "sky navy" sounds a bit

presumptuous; the flying galleons in the service of royal Shondakor were,

after all, but two in number. Actually, it was the fat, sleepy-eyed Prince of

Soraba who coined the term. Soraba is a maritime realm, and employs a

mercantile navy to transport its goods between the four Perushtarian cities

and also to trade with the cities of Ganatol and Shondakor, which are built on

the shores of navigable rivers.

The neologism was invented in this manner. Kaamurath of Soraba had offered the

use of his navy to transport the legions of war across that inland sea called

the Corund Laj. Then, pausing, blinking thoughtfully, he reminded himself that

the Golden City possessed its own navy-a small one, true enough-but a navy

whose keels rode the golden skies of Thanator rather than her green seas. A

"sky navy" he called it-kajathol in the universal language shared in common

between all of the many human or humanoid races of Callisto.* The term caught

on by reason of its novelty, I suppose, and was used to refer to our two

winged galleons from that point on.

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Jandar5:MindWizardsofCallistoByLinCarterBookOneTHEQUESTFORKUURChapter1TheMysteryoftheMindWizardsWhenyouhaveanenemy,youcannotrestinpeaceuntilyouhavedestroyedhim.Thisisoneofthegreatlawsoflife,anditholdsastrueforindividualmenasfornations.Asawarriorbyinclination,afighting-manbyprofession,Ihavemadethisdi...

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Lin Carter - Callisto 5 - Mind Wizards Of Callisto

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