Lin Carter - Callisto 4 - Mad Empress Of Callisto

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Jandar 4: Mad Empress of Callisto

By Lin Carter

Book One

ZAMARA OF THARKOL

Chapter 1

On the Great Plains

Man's inability to foresee future events is one of Nature's kindest gifts.

Had I but known what would come about from that day's idle hunting expedition; no power in the world

could have forced me to stir from the city of my beloved mate.

But a month of festivities and celebrations had begun to pall on one who was more accustomed to peril

and adventure than to interminable laudatory speechmaking and the laying of cornerstones. And besides,

the vanth were migrating.

Once each year this species of game traverses the Great Plains of Haratha to their mating grounds in the

valleys of the Black Mountains. You might describe the vanth as stag or elk, for they are the closest you

can come in terrene equivalents. A large quadruped, hunted for its succulent meat, which is greatly

favored by the Shondakorians; a beast, however, not befurred but covered with a slick, supple hide like

that of the seal or the dolphin; but a beast whose brow bears up a branching staglike crown of antlers

nonetheless.

At any other season of the Thanatorian year, the vanth are elusive and fleet-footed game, difficult to

catch and hopeless quarry to chase if you happen to be mounted on the restive and unruly thaptors the

inhabitants of the jungle Moon employ in lieu of horses. The thaptor is a large, feathered but wingless

avian vaguely like a cross between the ostrich and the legendary gryphon, and, like the ostrich, capable

of attaining remarkable speed. But its gallop, if I may employ the word, consists of spurts of brief

duration, while the mighty vanth can run all day without tiring.

During the short migratory season, however, the vanth traverse the Great Plains in gigantic herds, their

single purpose consisting of the mating urge. The presence of mounted huntsmen, which at any other

season would disperse them in rapid flight in all directions, they ignore at this season, intent only on

reaching their mating grounds in the distant mountains.

Thus, with dawn, a gaily caparisoned hunting party rode forth from the great gates of the Golden City of

Shondakor to hunt the vanth. And thus a sequence of events was set into motion which was to forever

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alter the destiny of a mighty empire and to reshape the future history of many nations.

I, Jandar of Callisto, soldier of fortune from the distant planet Earth, and my beloved Princess, Darloona

of Shondakor, rode in the forefront of this expedition. Scarce a month before-as we Earthlings measure

the passage of time-had we been wed, upon the success of my mission to rescue the Princess of the Ku

Thad from her captivity and to destroy for all time that race of cruel and despotic warriors, the Sky

Pirates of Zanadar. After innumerable adventures on the mysterious planet of Thanator, or Callisto, fifth

moon of distant Jupiter, I had won a double victory: the conquest of Zanadar, the City in the Clouds; and

the conquest of the heart of the most beautiful and desirable woman of two worlds.

Despite the alienage of my birth and despite my lack of noble or aristocratic lineage, I wed the woman I

loved with the wholehearted consent of her people and of the peers of her realm. And today I reigned

beside her as Prince of the Golden City. Such are the traditions of the Ku Thad race: the custom of a

prince-consort is unknown to them.

We were very happy, she and I.

On that fateful morning, as we rode from Shondakor to hunt the mighty vanth across the Great Plains,

we were accompanied by a party of our dearest friends and most loyal courtiers. Among these was the

handsome and dashing Prince Valkar, with whom I had formed a firm friendship while we had both

served incognito among that bandit-horde called the Chac Yuul, now long since dispersed and broken.

With us as well rode gallant and chivalrous Lukor of Ganatol, that master swordsman who had taught

me the ancient and noble science of the blade.

As well, there rode in our company the tall, gaunt, and solemn-eyed Koja of the Yathoon Horde, an alien

insectoid creature, who had been my first friend on all of Thanator and into whose cold and passionless

heart I had instilled the precepts of friendship. The ugly and doggedly devoted Ergon, a former slave of

the Perushtarians, and the somber but valiant and heroic Zantor, who had been a great captain among the

Corsairs of the Clouds, rode with us as well. And in our train thundered a half-company of the

guardsmen of Shondakor, armed against any unlikely danger.

Oh, we were a gay and laughing band, as we rode forth from the Golden City that bright and brilliant

morn!

How soon . . . how very soon . . . our gaiety was to darken with black tragedy and our laughter turn to

grim sorrow . . . and again I say, we mortals are fortunate that the future remains clouded and unknown,

so that we may enjoy each moment to the full, happily ignorant of what is soon to come.

It was Darloona who first sighted the white vanth. Her glorious eyes flashed with excitement, her lithe

body stretched in the saddle as she spurred her capricious thaptor into full gallop. Off she sped, the long

grasses sighing in her wake, one slim arm holding poised and ready the slender javelin.

Only a half-instant later I flew after her, jolting my steed into the charge, following the floating banner

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of her gorgeous scarlet mane. Ere long I had caught up to her and we rode together, side by side, in

pursuit of the vanth.

A white vanth is exceedingly rare and the huntsmen of Callisto consider such a beast a great prize. And

our vanth was indeed white as the new-fallen snow-a superb brute, fully grown, bearing up its proud

crown of antlers like the unchallenged monarch of the wilderness he was.

On ahead of. us he fled in great gliding bounds, flying like the wind. We urged our thaptors to an even

swifter stride, lest the beast escape us by reason of its untiring and superior speed. In no time we had left

the rest of our party far behind, with the sole exception of the determined Ergon. His squat, muscular

figure bent over the saddlebow, his scarlet face dark with exertion, bald pate gleaming with perspiration,

the Perushtarian flung himself after us before any of the others could follow.

I turned laughing back at him, aflame with the speed of the chase and the excitement of it all, and he

twisted his ugly, square-jawed face from its customarily sour expression into a gleeful, froglike grin.

Immensely strong he was broad-shouldered, deep-chested Ergon, for all his diminutive height and

bowed legs. We had been slaves together in the Perushtarian city of Narouk, and had fought side-by-side

among the gladiators of Zanadar, and the ugly, loyal little man was the most faithful of friends.

On and on ahead of us the white vanth bounded, gliding with an almost magical swiftness through the

long, sere grasses of the Great Plains of Haratha. Ere long my thaptor faltered, gasping for breath

through its gaping parrot beak, savage orange eyes rolling wildly. I strove to urge it on, employing the

small wooden club called an olo which is hung at the saddlebow for precisely that purpose; but it was no

good, for my steed was winded 'and its charge slowed, as did the four-legged bird-horses ridden by

Ergon and my beloved. We would lose the vanth, we knew, and must return to accept the laughing

mockery of our fellow hunters with chagrin.

But-no!-for even as our mounts slowed, the vanth itself faltered in its flight, and, although it maintained

a considerable lead on us, the beast no longer flew before us with the wings of the wind. Perchance it

had strained a tendon in its headlong and precipitous flight, for I could see that it limped, gingerly

putting its weight on one foreleg.

At any rate, from whatever cause, we still had a chance of coming within javelin-reach of the white

vanth; so, instead of turning about to rejoin our comrades, now far behind us on the plain, we pressed on

in hot pursuit of the limping vanth at diminished speed. And played into the hands of Destiny in so

doing . . . .

The Great Plains of Haratha are aptly named. From the inland sea of Sanmur Laj in the remote west to

the Black Mountains of the far east, they dominate the southern half of this jungle Moon from the

trackless jungles of the Grand Kumala on the equator to the austral pole itself-at least on the one

hemisphere of Thanator known to me and to my companions; for the other side of this world, as I have

elsewhere stated, yet remains an unexplored and impenetrable region of mystery.

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For many hundreds of korads, then, the plains stretch, league after league of desolate prairie whose long

grasses sigh and whisper beneath the winds. But by no means are the Great Plains of Haratha unbroken

flatlands, for here and there, like miniature islands amidst an ocean, small clumps of trees break the

monotony of the prairie. Generally, these are jaruka trees, which, with their gnarled and knotted black

trunks and branches and thick growth of uncanny scarlet foliage, are the most common arboreal flora of

the jungle Moon.

Towards one such stand of trees, our limping quarry now directed his faltering flight, hoping, quite

obviously, to evade his hunters amidst the heavily overgrown copse.

As we neared the clump of trees in turn, we could not help but notice that even as our snow-white quarry

was himself an unusual rarity among his kind, so were the trees among which he sought safe refuge.

That is to say, while the common jaruka tree has a black trunk and scarlet foliage, the copse ahead of us

seemed to be made up of an equally unusual arboreal rarity, the sorad tree, which reverses the normal

coloration, and boasts jet-black leafage with trunk and branches of curious scarlet wood. This copse in

particular, I noted without thinking anything of it at the time, was also unusual in the extreme height of

the sorad trees whereof it was composed. Commonly, it is yet a third species, the borath tree, which

attains the greater heights; yet these sorads, their massive girth denoting hoary centuries of growth,

soared to a stately height such as I have never before seen upon Thanator.

Unerringly did the limping vanth make for the safe refuge of this tall stand of sorad trees.

Unfalteringly did we direct our winded thaptors on its track.

We entered the grove virtually on the heels of the staggering vanth, but the underbrush was so thickly

grown that neither Ergon nor Darloona nor I could freely cast our light javelins in an attempt to bring it

down.

A narrow glade cut into the heart of the copse. Down its length the white vanth fled-but it was brought

up short at the end of this glade, for here a solid wall of century-old sorads rose like a great palisade.

We sprang from our thaptors and advanced on foot as the white vanth turned at bay to face its hunters.

Darloona's glorious emerald eyes flashed with the excitement of the chase. Her superb bosom rose and

fell, pantingly, as she breathed. Poised like a dancing-girl, my Princess confronted the vanth with lifted

javelin. Against the gloom of the thick woods, the mighty beast glimmered ghostly white.

And then, like the phantom it so resembled, it vanished!

And in its place stood a small, dwarfed figure, swathed in heavy robes of neutral gray.

A strange little man, placid and plump-faced and smiling, with a butter-yellow skin, a bald head, and

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cold, slitted eyes of gelid ink-black venom.

Darloona gasped at this astounding apparition. Only a moment before the magnificent white vanth had

turned at bay, menacing us with its crown of antlers.

Now it had melted into this air . . . and, in its place, a dwarfed figure in gray, smiling and enigmatic.

Magic! Or-dream?

Frozen with astonishment, I stood rooted to my tracks, staring at the yellow dwarf.

By my side, burly-chested Ergon glowered, one calloused paw gripping the heft of the great bronze war

axe that seldom was far from his side.

"Where did yonder fellow spring from, Jandar?" he growled.

I shrugged. "As well ask, whither vanished the great white vanth we followed," I said.

"What vanth is that?" He grunted, curiously.

I stared at him, wondering if I had heard correctly.

"The great white vanth that fled before us across the plains," I said, wondering if we were both mad.

He looked at me in astonishment.

"I saw no vanth," he said puzzledly, "white or otherwise !"

Darloona and I exchanged a stare of amazement.

"But-I" I started to protest. But my protest was never concluded.

Because just then the weighted nets fell upon us from the branches overhead.

Chapter 2

Kidnaped in the Clouds

It was all done so swiftly that it was over within seconds. A mind of consummate cunning, quite

obviously, had spun the web which now entrapped us. But it was accomplished with such bewildering

swiftness, that, at the time, I was too busy striving to cope with the mere succession of events to think

much about it.

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The nets were weighted with heavy stones and bore us to the ground. We sprawled, entangled in the

meshes, and before either Ergon or I could free ourselves sufficiently to draw the hunting knives we

wore scabbarded at our girdles, a horde of red-skinned men fell upon us from the branches above. They

had the scarlet skin of Perushtarians, but their heads were covered with long black hair which they wore

woven into a single thick queue down the back of the neck, like Chinamen.

This meant that, whatever they were, they were not Perushtarians, or, at least, not Perushtarians of pure-

blooded descent. For the red men of the merchant empire were bald as so many eggs.

At the time, of course, I was too busy struggling against the many hands which clutched at me to worry

about modes of hirsute adornment. This struggle, of course, was futile: tangled in the web as I was, I

could not free my hands in order to cut my way free or use the sword I wore at my shoulder-baldric.

Neither could Ergon, for all his burly strength. Our adversaries were too many in sheer weight of

number, and had planned and doubtlessly rehearsed their attack in such wise as to render us helpless and

securely trussed in half a minute.

We were disarmed, our wrists securely bound behind our backs with rawhide thongs, gags thrust into

our mouths, and it was all accomplished with dazzling speed of execution. Then the squat red men with

the thick black queues of plaited hair cut us free of the nets and dragged us to our feet, propelling us

across the clearing and into the depths of the woods.

And all this while the yellow dwarf stood watching, a cold gloating smile crinkling his cold black slitted

eyes.

In a detached manner, I could not help feeling an abstract sort of admiration for the speed and timing

and efficiency with which our capture was accomplished. We were not handled with any particular

brutality; neither were any indignities used against my Princess, although she was furious and raging, as

was I. At the time, I did not feel any singular fear. Our captors had immobilized and disarmed us with

great skill and cunning, but I remained calm and unworried, although I desired nothing more than to be

free of my bonds and to get a sword into my hands.

The dispassion wherewith I viewed our present plight may easily be explained. I viewed our

predicament, you see, as a temporary one. Not ten minutes behind us rode our true and loyal friends,

Luker, Valkar, and Zantor. The master swordsman of Ganatol, the heroic son of Lord Yarrak, and the

mightiest champion of the gladiators of Zanadar would be upon the scene in minutes at the most, and

against their blades the squat, red-skinned ambushers would be helpless, for all their number. And at the

heels of our friends rode a half-company of armed Shondakorian guardsmen.

No-thought I, detachedly-we had nothing to fear. Our position, although humiliating and uncomfortable,

was temporary at most. Rescue, freedom, and vengeance rode towards us through the grassy plains with

the speed of the wind.

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Or so I thought at the time.

Our captors hurried us along through the thick underbrush and then thrust us into the most peculiar

contraption.

It was like nothing more than an immense wicker basket woven of tough river reeds and stiffened with

ribs of a light, fibrous, hollow, and tubular wood that resembled bamboo in all respects save that of

coloration.

This basket was large enough to hold fifteen persons, as was shortly proved. For the dozen or so men

who had seized us, together with the yellow, slant-eyed dwarf in neutral gray, and a young woman of

aristocratic and even imperious bearing and hauteur joined us within the inexplicable enclosure.

I had naturally expected to be bundled into the saddle of a thaptor, for how else could our kidnappers

hope to bear us away from swift and certain rescue? But the immense basket sat on the thickly grassed

ground. It proved not even to be a wickerwork chariot as I had thought it to be at first glance. No, the

huge light thing of woven reeds was hung from the branches above, for long woven cables or ropes went

up from the rim of the basket into the leafy gloom above our heads.

What in the world did our captors hope to accomplish by this inexplicable act? I exchanged a wide-eyed

glance and eloquent shrug with Ergon and Darloona. Were we in the hands of a pack of raving madmen?

Did they hope to hide thus from the gaze of our rescuers? That was absurd and ludicrous: Valkar and the

others would comb every square inch of this stand of trees until they found us.

As yet not one of our captors had so much as uttered a single word.

Now the imperious young woman who had joined us in the basket delivered a command in a sharp, clear

voice.

"Cut us free, Zapur!"

One of the warriors plucked a hooked knife from his girdle, leaned from the basket, and began to saw at

yet another rope. This rope was tied about the lower trunk of the nearer of the sorad trees.

Simultaneously, another warrior leaned out from the other side of the basket and began cutting through a

second rope, secured about another sorad trunk on the other side.

Surely, our captors were deranged! Their actions simply made no sense. And yet, with what cunning and

sense of timing the red men had planned and carried out their plot! A cold little wind of intuition blew

against the back of my neck.

A moment later, my intuition proved valid.

Our captors were not insane. Indeed, they knew exactly what they were doing.

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For me jerked loose from the ground and swung up into the air!

Ergon and Darloona were struck wide-eyed with amazement. What was happening seemed to them

inexplicable and utterly astonishing. I, too, was astonished; but I alone understood what was

happening . . . and my former confidence at the certainty of a swift and easy rescue emptied from me on

the moment, to be replaced by a growing fear . . .

For, while I had thought the only aerial transport known to the denizens of Callisto to be the flying ships

of the Zanadarian pirates, this type of lighter-than-air craft had been used on my native Earth for

generations before I had been born.

In short-we were riding in a balloon!

The capacious wickerwork basket was suspended by woven cables from a huge air tight gasbag filled, I

suppose, either with heated air or with some gas akin to hydrogen or helium. The balloon itself was of

some shiny woven material like oiled silk or wax-impregnated linen. Painted black, it had been invisible

to us in the darkness of the copse, hidden among the black foliage of the sorad trees. Once cut loose, it

swung aloft in instants. Now we cleared the topmost branches of the tall trees and floated free on the

winds of the upper air.

The clump of trees dwindled beneath us. At the very edge of the copse I saw some of our would-be

rescuers riding into the woods. Of course, it never occurred to any of our friends to look up and to search

for us in the clouds!

I understood now why we had been so tightly and thoroughly gagged. And, remembering my former

aloof amusement at our pointless captivity, and my bland assumption that rescue and vengeance lay only

minutes away, I felt the sickening impact of worry, as the grim realization of how desperate our situation

actually was came home to me.

But there was nothing I could do about it . . . at least for the present.

The young woman was laughing in delight and excitement at the success of the coup. Triumph flashed

in her eyes as she exchanged a few words with the yellow dwarf, then glanced over at me with

amusement. I eyed her grimly, inwardly furious.

She was a curious figure, I realized. Young and very beautiful, with the red skin of a Perushtarian. But,

like the others, she was no Perushtarian, for the long silken banner of her glistening black hair floated on

the winds about us. She wore an odd gown in a style unfamiliar to me, a light garment of silken stuff,

tightly stretched across her breasts and fastened with a jeweled brooch over one shoulder, leaving the

other shoulder and arm bare. She was, quite evidently, a woman of considerable wealth and importance,

for expensive gems flashed at throat and ear,. rings of precious metal adorned her slender hands, and a

coronet of odd design encircled her brows, flashing with precious stones.

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But I had not the slightest notion of who she was. To the very best of my memory, I had never laid eyes

on her before in all my life, and I had no idea of why she had kidnapped us.

It was very obvious that the young woman was in command of this situation. The stolid-faced,

bowlegged red warriors deferred to her with every token of awe and subservience. Even the little yellow

dwarf with the slitted black gaze seemed in her service. She stood, tall, lithe, and laughing, one jeweled

hand clinging to the guide ropes of the balloon, imperious and triumphant as a queen.

But queen of what-and where?

Few and widely-separated are the cities of Thanator the Jungle Moon. Several of the civilizations that

share this world between them are wandering and homeless nomad peoples, like the insectoids of the

Yathoon Horde or the bandits of the now-disbanded Chac Yuul legion. Our only enemies, the Sky

Pirates of Zanadar, we had but recently destroyed, laying their city in ruins. And they dwell in the White

Mountains, far away to the northwest. The red empire of the Perushtarians is situated many korads to the

northeast of Shondakor; and the four Perushtarian cities of Farz, Narouk, Soraba, and imperial Perusht

itself, are widely scattered about the shores of the landlocked sea of Corund Laj. The nearest of the

seven cities of Thanator to golden Shondakor is the city of Tharkol, which stands amidst the equatorial

plains in the eastern extremity of the hemisphere.

With none of these seven cities is Shondakor currently at enmity, much less at war. With the exception

of the Perushtarian merchant empire, the cities of Callisto are lone and individual sovereignties. Our

relations with the city-states of Ganatol or Tharkol, for instance, are few; we exchange no ambassadors

and we indulge in no trade or commerce. Both cities are vastly inferior to golden Shondakor in size,

wealth, or power. For either metropolis to contemplate war with the Golden City of the Ku Thad would

be absurd. They would have nothing to gain and everything to lose, for, having but recently broken the

power of the Chac Yuul bandit legion, and having for all time exterminated the aerial corsairs of distant

Zanadar, we have in recent months emerged as the most powerful nation on this planet.

Only the red empire of the Perushtarians are more numerous than the Ku Thad in terms of populace, and

more wealthy. But the red men of Perushtar are the least warlike of all the nations of Thanator. They are

a nation of tradesmen, a mercantile civilization like that of the ancient Carthaginians in the remote

history of my own world.

For them to challenge the might of victorious Shondakor would be folly and madness. They do not even

maintain a standing army, and during the long recent decades during which their trading caravans and

merchant fleets were preyed upon by the flying corsairs of Zanadar, they grudgingly paid an annual

tribute to assure their immunity from the depredations of the Sky Pirates, rather than raise an army of

war.

Bound and gagged and helpless to discuss the situation with my Princess or Ergon, I could only lie,

seething with silent rage, while these questions boiled through my turbulent thoughts.

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By this time we had ascended to the height of at least half a mile into the air, and were drifting due east

on the prevailing winds. Or so I guessed, anyway. It is somewhat difficult to judge one's direction on

Callisto. The inhabitants of the jungle Moon have yet to invent the compass, and as this world is

illuminated by a layer of luminous golden vapor in its atmosphere, one never sees the sun and thus

cannot with ease or surety judge east from west, which is the easiest thing to do on my own native Earth.

But judging the direction of our flight as best I could, we were flying east . . . east, towards the unknown

edge of the world itself, for, as I have said, the far side of Callisto is a realm of unexplored mystery to

the natives of this planet. Nothing at all is known of the other hemisphere, save that somewhere therein

resides a mysterious people called the Mind Wizards of Kuur, with whom I have already had one

encounter.

As related in an earlier volume of these memoirs*, while serving incognito among the warriors of the

Chac Yuul, I discovered that one of the advisors of Arkola, chief of the Black Legion, was a Kuurian

named Ool the Uncanny. A little plump, placid Buddha of a man, bald, with slitted eyes and butter-

yellow skin, the clever and cunning little priest had been none other than the power behind the throne, so

to speak. A shudder ran through me at the memory of that uncanny battle in the Pits, when I had crossed

swords with the cunning Ool, in a desperate, last-minute attempt to rescue my beloved Princess from a

forced marriage with Prince Vaspian, the son of Arkola the Usurper. Although I am in my own right a

master swordsman, Ool proved almost my match, for the little Kuurian possessed the weird power of

mental telepathy and thus could read my mind and know my every thought. It is, as I discovered during

that desperate duel in the dungeons, almost impossible to conquer a swordsman who can read your

mind . . .

Suddenly I stiffened where I lay, helplessly bound in the basket o f the drifting balloon!

Ool had been a little man, almost a dwarf . yellow-skinned and bald, with slanted eyes, gowned in a

priestlike robe of gray . . .

My gaze flashed across the crowded basket to where the yellow dwarf squatted. His clever and beady

black eyes bored into mine, almost knowingly. Almost as if he knew or guessed the direction of my

thoughts, a cold and crafty smile hovered about his thin lips-and he nodded.

I tore my gaze from his slanted eyes, and lay stunned in realization.

One of the many mysteries that surrounded our capture was now solved.

For the malignant, gloating little dwarf, with butter-yellow skin was a Mind Wizard of distant and

unknown Kuur.

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Lin Carter - Callisto 4 - Mad Empress Of Callisto

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