By the Light of the Green Star

Chapter 5 Ice, the Sky-Sled

The sky-sled swung away from the temple tier and arrowed off into the night. Gasping for breath, Janchan clung to the hand-grips, gratefully feeling the cool, clear night air wash over him. Fresh air tasted indescribably delicious to one who had, mere moments before, stood amid the flames of a seething inferno. At his side, Niamh the Fair lay, her wide eyes mirroring her amazement. Never in her life before had the youthful Princess of Phaolon conceived of anything as strange and inexplicable as this glittering golden thing that sped through the night sky as if borne on invisible wings. Nor had she, in her wildest dreams, pictured a being quite so peculiar as the gaunt, winged, and hairless Kalood who sat at the controls of the amazing flying vehicle.

In a few moments they would have soared beyond the limits of the Yellow City, and would be lost in the darkness. Janchan was filled with excitement and relief; against all chance, he had at last succeeded in rescuing the beautiful young Princess of Phaolon from the very stronghold of her enemies. Before long the darkness would conceal them from all eyes, and then, with the aid of the map which the sky-sled contained, they could fly on to Phaolon. His quest would be accomplished; he, alone of all the nobles and aristocrats who had sworn to search the world for the lost princess, would have the unequaled honor of returning her safely to her kingdom. And, now that he thought of it, it seemed likely that the future would hold only peace for Phaolon. For the power of Ardha was hopelessly split into warring factions, and in the struggle for supremacy between these factions the captive princess had been a pawn of unthinkable value.

He grinned, remembering. Akhmim, Tyrant of Ardha, had taken Niamh captive. But Arjala, marshaling the strength of the Temple faction, had trumped his ace by offering her “sanctuary” in the holy precinct. This sanctuary, of course, was but another prison; but at least Arjala had rescued the young girl from a forced marriage with the Tyrant, which would have brought the Throne of Phaolon the Jewel City into his grasp without war.

And now, with the theft of the princess by unknown hands, Throne and Temple would be at each other’s throats here in Ardha for some time to come. For the Temple faction, of course, would naturally think it had been agents of the tyrant who had stolen the girl back.

And, with Ardha split in two, on the brink of civil war, there would be no time or reason to mount the long-delayed invasion of Phaolon. The Jewel City was saved!

A muffled groan came to him as he lay there against the smooth flanks of the sky-sled, feeling the cool air wash over his weary, soot-smudged limbs. He peered around to find the source of this groan. Beyond him, the body of a voluptuous woman lay sprawled, her glorious hair tangled, her jeweled tiara askew. He frowned, wishing his innate sense of chivalry had not forced him to rescue the Goddess Arjala as well as Niamh from the roaring inferno that had been the cell of the princess. But he could not stand idly by while she suffered a horrible death in the flames.

Now she was wakening from her swoon. Her long lashes fluttered, then opened. Wide dark eyes peered about at the flashing gloom as the sky-sled soared beyond the edge of the branch whereon the Yellow City of Ardha stood, and flew into the impenetrable darkness. Her eyes were wide with unbelieving terror; for, no more than had Niamh, the Goddess had never dreamed such a flying vehicle existed.

“What—? How?” she gasped, throwing herself erect.

Janchan reached up to steady her.

“Calm yourself, madam,” he said. “You are not in the Second Life, and neither is this a dream.”

“But…” Arjala cried. And then her voice broke off and she paled as her eyes fell upon the golden, winged creature who sat at the controls of the craft.

“My amphashand!” she shrieked.

Janchan repressed a grin. The Temple faction had seized upon Zarqa when he had been captured by huntsmen, employing him for his symbolic value in the war between Temple and Throne. For indeed the gaunt and naked creature, with his enormous batlike wings and bulging, hairless brow bore a startling resemblance to the winged heavenly messengers of Laonese fable.

“Your amphashand is no amphashand,” Janchan said, “but a Kalood—the last survivor of a prehistoric race of winged beings who ruled all this world in the days before mankind arose from the murk of brutehood. He and his kind achieved great wisdom and knowledge of the secret laws of nature, and by their science-magic were able to construct flying vehicles such as this sky-sled wherewith Zarqa, for such is his true name, has rescued us from the flames.”

“But how… ?”

“How does the sled fly?” Janchan asked, guessing the import of her unspoken query. He shrugged. “I do not know that myself. I believe, however, that it is somehow attuned to the magnetic currents produced by this planet, and rides the magnetic waves in much the same manner as a drifting petal rides upon the wind. It does not really matter, of course. What matters is that by its means we have been able to escape from the city of our enemies, and will be able to restore the Princess Niamh to her people. With that purpose in mind, Zarqa and I, and a young companion of ours named Karn, who has since unhappily disappeared or been slain by a beast of the wild, flew hither to Ardha from a dead city of the Kaloodha.”

Arjala absorbed this in silence. Then, when Janchan had finished his explanation, she drew herself up and said, imperiously;

“Very well, slave! I understand little of the madness whereof you rave, but explanations matter naught. Command the winged one to turn this craft about and return to the Temple precinct at once. I desire to return to my own people.”

Janchan shook his head reluctantly.

“I’m afraid that will be impossible, madam. It would endanger us; the Temple legions may have seen our departure, and may even now be flying after us. I had no intention of forcing you to accompany us, but it was either that or abandon you to a horrible death amid the flames.”

Arjala stared at him with flashing eyes.

“Did you not hear me, slave? I command it! And do not call me ‘madam’—I am Holy Arjala, Incarnate. You will address me as ‘Divinity,’ or ‘Goddess.’ “

Janchan could not help laughing.

“Very well, Goddess. But please do not address me as ‘slave.’ I am Prince Janchan, of the House of the Ptolnim, a noble of Phaolon. And, goddess or no goddess, I fear I must disobey. We cannot take the risk of returning to Ardha in order to release you to rejoin your people. However, if you wish, I think it would be safe enough for us to pause at the next branch we approach, and set you down there—”

The Goddess gasped.

“Such insolence! You would thrust me forth into the night, helpless prey to whatever monstrous beast may roam the nighted ways, thirsting for blood. I will never permit it.”

Janchan shrugged.

“I cannot say that I blame you. But then we shall have to take you with us, wherever we go.”

Recovering her sense of humor after the desperate tension which had preceded her rescue, the Princess of Phaolon smiled wickedly, and said in a soft, demure voice; “Surely, the magical powers of an Incarnate Goddess should be sufficient to protect your Divinity from the menace of the wild?”

Arjala shot the girl a suspicious glance, uncertain as to whether the suggestion had contained an element of sarcasm. But the face of Niamh was bland and innocent. The Goddess sniffed.

“Doubtless so, girl. But it is not wise to trust entirely to the Gods of The World Above, my Divine cousins though they be. It is written ‘Inscrutable be the ways of the Heavenly Ones.’ Therefore, if this young man refuses, I insist on accompanying you—but only until such time as my warriors have taken you prisoner, one and all. Then you shall have reason to learn it was not well to flout the commands of the Goddess Incarnate.”

With that last rhetorical flourish, the Goddess seated herself once again upon the sky-sled, and, wrapping herself in cold dignity, lapsed into an aloof silence.

By this time, the sky-sled had flown across the gulf of empty air, perhaps a half-mile in width, which stretched between the giant tree in whose arms the city of Ardha nestled, and its nearest neighbor. The sled soared through the branches, speed dwindling, as the lights of the Yellow City shrank and became swallowed up in the darkness.

Pursuit, if any there was to be, would be hot on their heels, and the flying warriors of Ardha would wring every last bit of speed they possibly could from their dragonfly-steeds. This being obvious, it was perhaps ironic that here Zarqa must reduce speed himself, for it was quite dangerous to fly by night on the world of giant trees. If the planet had any moon at all, which was doubtful, it was above the clouds that enveloped the planet and its rays were too dim to penetrate the cloudy veil. Neither did the stars serve to illuminate the world during the hours of darkness, since they were but rarely visible, and then peered down timidly through momentary rents in the cloud-veil. The nights on this planet were thus nights of utter and absolute gloom, and to fly at all during the nocturnal period was almost unheard of, for the danger of collision with a branch or even a twig was ever-present.

Prince Janchan leaned over and touched the gaunt, silent Kalood on one naked shoulder.

“Friend Zarqa, I think we would make better time if we ascend to the high terraces. The branches thin out not far above. And our departure may have been noted by some, even on this night of festival and revelry. The Ardhanese may be hot on our track already.”

His words were clearly audible to the two women on the sled, despite the rushing wind. But the reply of the Kalood, which also was clearly received by all, brought an uncanny thrill to the two women, neither of whom had yet heard the Kalood “speak.”

Your assumption is correct, Prince, Zarqa agreed in his cold, telepathic mode of communication. Already a flight of Temple guards follow fast behind us.

The Goddess Arjala stifled a shrill cry of mingled horror and awe and clasped her hands to her brow at the uncanny sensation. For the Winged Men do not speak as we do, which is to say “mouth to ear,” but communicate directly mind to mind. They possess no organs of audible speech, although their sense of bearing is as acute as that of humans.

If the Goddess reacted with chill horror to the sensation of telepathy, the younger girl found it more curious and interesting than frightful.

“Oh, it is like a small still, quiet voice speaking within my own head,” she exclaimed. “Ask the creature to do it again, please, Prince!”

The Kalood smiled at the child over his gaunt, bony shoulder.

Do not be afraid of me, ladies, he advised gently. I am a rational being and your friend, and nothing you need fear.

The Princess of Phaolon examined him with interested eyes. The Kalood was naked and sexless, his lean, attenuated, and not unhandsome body covered with a cool, dry, tough golden hide. There was truly nothing monstrous or abnormal about his appearance, although it was strange to her eyes. It was the high, arched, batlike wings—now neatly folded upon his shoulders—which made him seem so different from the common run of humankind, but even these were not horrible or beastlike once you got accustomed to them. Indeed, they looked somehow natural and fitting on his tall form, with the high, bony shoulders and long sinewy arms.

But his features were in no wise particularly different from the faces of men. True, he had a swelling dome of a brow, and a long, lantern-jawed, lugubrious face, with huge, sad eyes of luminous and mystic purple, devoid of the whites. He seemed to be entirely hairless, his domed brow bald but crowned with a stiff crest of darkly-golden feathers that began between his eyes and extended in a narrow strip over the top of his skull, from brow to nape—for all the world like the clipped horsehair crest on an ancient Greek helmet.

His mouth was small, thin-lipped, but perfectly formed. The oddest thing about his features was not at once noticeable. And that was that he lacked the organs of hearing, and where the ears protrude from the sides of a man’s head stretched only smooth, unbroken flesh.

But his features, albeit strange, were not unhandsome, certainly not repellent; neither were they devoid of expression. There was gentle intelligence and wisdom and a surprisingly human flicker of humor about his mobile features. And when he smiled at the girl, his features lit up with inner warmth and friendliness.

“Why, I’m not afraid of you at all—‘Zarqa,’ is that your name?” she cried. He nodded, and she said; “It must be extremely sad to be the last of your kind; sad, and lonely, too, I am sure. Thank you for your share in rescuing me …”

Zarqa nodded gratefully. It is indeed sad and lonely to be an immortal, my child. But since the boy, Karn, a youth no longer with us and whom I judge to be only a year or two older than yourself, rescued me from the magician’s tower in the Dead City of Sotaspra, it has been less lonely. For now I have found good friends among your race (among which I hope to soon be able to count your charming self), and so numerous and exciting have been the adventures through which we have recently passed that, why, I have had no time in which to feel lonely.

Janchan and the princess laughed at this slight attempt of humor on the part of Zarqa, but as for the Goddess, she shuddered at the unspeakably weird sensation of telepathic communication, and viewed the vaunt, golden man with superstitious horror and loathing. Indeed, when Zarqa turned back to his work at the controls and set his full attention to the problem of ascending to the high terraces, Arjala leaned over and touched Niamh’s shoulder.

“Be careful, girl, with that winged monster!” she hissed in the princess’ ear. “The amphashands occupy an equivocal role in our legends; they have been known to tear heroes asunder, and in certain of the Sacred Books they are depicted as having an obsession with human females. Beware lest the creature delude you with a pretense of friendliness, and lure you aside, only to subject you to his masculine lusts!”

Niamh would have laughed, but she repressed it. Instead she turned a wide-eyed stare on the older woman, whom she found a delight in teasing.

“Do you mean—rape?” the girl asked, with a straight face.

“That… or even worse!” the Goddess affirmed.

Pausing for just a moment to wonder what could possibly be worse, Niamh leaned over and whispered; “I will certainly beware of the eventuality, Goddess… but, in case you haven’t yet noticed, Zarqa lacks certain other organs besides those of speech and hearing.”

Arjala flushed, started to speak, then turned a fierce, suspicious eye on the girl. Completely lacking a sense of humor herself, the Goddess continually suspected that others were making fun of her, but could seldom be quite sure.

However, the young girl’s face was demure and smiling, and if there was just the slightest glint of mischief in her eye, Arjala could not perceive it. So, with a stiff and haughty nod, she retired to silence again, while Niamh continued chatting in a lively and animated fashion with her two rescuers.

Arjala hoped her guardsmen would soon arrive and overtake the sky-sled, and set her free from the company of these curiously relaxed and friendly persons, whose casual impertinence was beginning to exasperate her. Arjala never felt fully comfortable, save when among people who regarded her with a fitting degree of superstitious awe, and who had been imbued from the cradle with a consciousness of their own lowly and inferior station.

Chapter 6 The Descent of the Gods

They spent the few hours of darkness that remained in that long and busy night camped upon a small branchlet atop the nearest tree. By ascending into the high terraces, Zarqa correctly assumed that he had managed to elude the Ardhanese warriors pursuing them. Hungry, exhausted, drained from the tension and excitement of their escape, the four adventurers slept deeply.

All save for Zarqa the Kalood. In the immeasurable centuries of his existence, the Winged Man had to a great extent fallen out of the habit of slumbering during the nocturnal period. Sleep, for his kind, anyway, was little more than a habit, for the heady and honeyed syrup on which he infrequently fed was sustenance enough for his extraordinary vitality, and the immense vigor and stamina of his alien body was such that it seldom actually required sleep.

So Zarqa kept guard over his companions while they slumbered. Sitting on the edge of the branchlet, his long arms hugging his knees, the gaunt, naked, golden Kalood stared thoughtfully into the depths of the dark night where no moon rose and no stars shone. What were the thoughts that filled his calm and vast and ageless mind during those long hours I cannot say—I will not even guess—but it is likely that more than once his memory conjured up the likeness of the boy Karn, his first friend among human kind, and the first mortal who had won his affection in a million years or more.

They were very unalike, those two. The boy, sixteen or seventeen at most, an untutored savage, a young orphan huntsman of the wild, with his gawky adolescent body, all long legs and strong shoulders, his wild tangled shock of raw gold hair, snub-nosed face with wide, amber eyes bright and clear and alert, bore no slightest resemblance or affinity to the gaunt, lean, seven-foot, winged Kalood who had outlived the last of his weird race ten thousand centuries ago.

But, somehow, from opposite ends of the world (from opposite corners of the very universe itself, although Zarqa knew it not) these two had come together and had found a common ground on which to build a friendship. A friendship which still endured, although the Kalood little guessed that I, Karn of the Red Dragon people, yet lived.

Zarqa heaved a deep sigh and his face fell slowly forward until his long, pointed jaw rested on his bony knees. Immense purple eyes solemn with melancholy, the ageless Kalood brooded in the stillness of the night, remembering with a strange warmth mingled with sadness the quick, bright, daring youth who had rescued him from the prison of Sarchimus the Wise, and had offered him the precious gift of friendship.

Sunrise on the world of the giant trees is a slow and gradual thing, an affair of imperceptible degrees of lightening. The vast orb of emerald radiance that is the Green Star, whose name I shall never know, rises behind a thick veil of silvery clouds—clouds by which the shafts of burning jade-green light are diffused into a common and sourceless brilliance. By delicate graduations the light of the Green Star suffuses the cloudy heavens into a dim, rich luminance.

Dawn, thus, was upon Zarqa the Kalood before he was fully aware of the gradual illumination. But when at last he perceived that it was day, he rose, refreshed himself with a brief sip from the stores of golden syrup that were all the sustenance he would require for years, and went to rouse his companions.

They broke their fast on a frugal meal. Before they had left the Scarlet Pylon of Sarchimus the Wise in the Dead City of Sotaspra, Zarqa, Janchan, and Karn the Hunter had stored provisions for their journey aboard the sky-sled. These stores consisted of preserved meats, dried fruits, a jug or two of resinous red wine, loaves of coarse but singularly nutritious black bread, and several canteens of fresh water, as well as supplies of the golden syrup on which Zarqa infrequently fed. In the interval between the departure from the Dead City and this dawn, a matter of slightly more than two weeks, these supplies had necessarily dwindled. There were enough supplies left to assuage their hunger and thirst, however, but before long it would be needful to kill fresh game and procure fruits, nuts, or berries from the trees of the forest.

Arjala complained fretfully over the Spartan simplicity of their morning meal. The Goddess customarily broke her fast on a superb repast of delicately spiced sausage, honey-cakes, sugared melon, brandied whipped cream, and an astringent white liqueur which savored of anise.

“Why, this is food for peasants—fodder for slaves!” she fumed, refusing to accept another bite. Prince Janchan shrugged good humoredly.

“As you wish, Goddess. All the more for the princess and I, in that case.” But Arjala was not amused.

“We of the Heavenly lineage are not accustomed to dining on sustenance of such crudity. As befits our nearness to the Divine, our senses and our being are more highly refined and attenuated, in comparison with the grosser breeds. We require a more elegant and subtler fare—which you must supply, noble. I will starve if I must endure another meal of this nature.”

“Starve, then, if it pleases you,” the prince said affably. “For we can supply no daintier cuisine than that spread before you; and by tomorrow, we shall have to hunt and kill in order to have meat…”

The Goddess was too appalled at the thought to be offended by his easy shrug.

” ‘Meat’—meat?” she gasped, paling. “Do-you-expect-me-to devour raw meat, like—like a—a savage?” They eyed her with amusement, exchanging a wicked glance of mischief.

“Alas, I fear we must stoop to it, Goddess.” Janchan smiled. “I should think you would find it a refreshing change, after all those rich spices and precious sauces. And we shan’t exactly rip our meat all raw and dripping from the bone, you know. I think we shall be able to manage a bit of a fire, with luck, and char just the outer portions of the gory, steaming flesh a bit.”

The Goddess gulped, turned sickly green, and almost lost what small share of the breakfast she had been able to down. Then she waxed eloquent on the bestial and sub human lineage of her captors, and the loathsome and degrading manner in which they forced her to subsist on food little better than stinking offal.

Janchan began to lose his own temper. It was one thing to go along with the voluptuous but ill-humored priestess who amused him with her pretense of divinity in which, apparently, she devoutly believed. But one could endure her airs only up to a point, and he was near that point.

“Oh, do stop your whining and complaining, Arjala! You begin to sound like a spoiled child, instead of a mature woman of breeding, character, and intelligence. The food we have to share may not be worthy of a prince’s table, much less a Goddess’, but it is all we have, and it is not only edible and nourishing, but not unflavorful. Remember, you insisted on coming along with us, when I would have let you dismount in the tree next to that wherein Ardha is built. Having elected to share our lot, it ill befits you now to whimper so.”

Arjala was so astounded at being upbraided by a mere mortal that she almost forgot to be angry. Never in her entire life had she been spoken to in so blunt and unsympathetic a manner, and the sensation was thoroughly beyond her experience.

Always before she had been addressed with obsequious and suave flattery, by underlings and inferiors who, themselves raised in the same system, accepted without really thinking about it her Divine status and their own lowly place in the hierarchy. Now this mere noble, this ordinary aristocrat, this young man whose very lineage and ancestry were unknown to her, had the almost inconceivable effrontery to address her in so rude and inconsiderate a manner. The experience was so new to her that she hardly knew how to deal with it. So she stuttered and stammered, flustered and looking foolish—and, what was even worse, knowing that she looked foolish.

And then Niamh added the crowning injury to the insult she had already endured.

“Yes, do try to make the best of things, dear. As for the food, well, it may be hardier than you or I are accustomed to, but it is agreeable and even palatable. And, remember, dear, my digestive processes are every bit as close to Divinity as are your own?”

Arjala turned on the younger woman a gaze of speechless indignation. Niamh smiled merrily.

“Oh, didn’t you know? I, too, am the Goddess Incarnate. We are spiritual sisters, dear… but I doubt if our Divine cousins of The World Above are very likely to rescue either of us from our perils.”

Unable to think of a fitting rejoinder to this ultimate affront, Arjala turned on her heel and sat awkwardly, with her back to her companions. She had been aware, in a hazy fashion, that the Goddess reigned over the Temple in every Laonese city, incarnate in a different fleshly vessel in each dominion. But she had never really thought about it before, since the various cities of the forest world had very little commerce with each other. She knew that in the Jewel City of Phaolon the rival factions of Throne and Temple had resolved their differences a generation or so ago, through intermarriage between the Incarnate Goddess of that era and the temporal monarch. Thus both Throne and Temple were mingled in the solitary person of Niamh the Fair, the present queen—and also the current avatar of the Goddess in Phaolon.

But there is a difference between being aware of this situation as a vague part of one’s general knowledge of the world, and in having the truth brought, so to speak, right beneath your nose. Arjala would dearly have loved to have been able to give the lie to Niamh’s outrageous claim to be the Incarnate Goddess of Phaolon. The trouble was that she could not, for she knew it was true. She stole a furtive glance over her shoulder at the two. Niamh and Janchan, ignoring her presence, sat chatting and laughing together, drinking with apparent relish the harsh red wine that had burned her throat, and sharing between them the coarse dry bread she had found bitter, and the spiced preserved meats that had almost made her nauseous.

The girl seemed quite free and easy, relaxed and natural, she thought to herself, grudgingly. It could not be pretense, forced upon her by harsh circumstances.

Could there be… could there possibly be… something wrong with her own way of thinking… ?

Arjala stiffened, clamping her lips together. Nonsense! And sacrilege, as well! She must never forget—could never forget—that she was Divinity Incarnate, and all others were of a coarse and mundane breed. She must cling to that belief, or she would lose… belief in everything, even in herself.

“You will see,” she hissed venomously under her breath.

“My Divine cousins will yet come to rescue me from these intolerable circumstances! They will. They… must.”

Their morning meal completed, the four travelers rewrapped what meager scraps remained of their almost exhausted supplies of food, and stored the packages in the compartments of the sky-sled once again, against future need.

They were engaged in climbing aboard their craft and in strapping each other securely in place, in preparation for launching forth on the last leg of their flight, which, with just a bit of luck, would see them safely home in nearby Phaolon before the shadows of evening lengthened, when another kind of shadow darkened the treetop in their vicinity.

An enormous shadow.

An unthinkably enormous shadow.

A shadow nearly three miles long.

As the rim of darkness glided across them, they stared up in amazement—frozen—appalled—fascinated!

All but Arjala the Goddess Incarnate. Her beautiful features flushed with color, her imperious eyes flashed with radiant joy. Suffused with exultant emotion, she threw back her head in a superb gesture and laughed triumphantly at the vindication of her most cherished beliefs concerning her own divinity.

From the circular rim of the dark thing which floated far above them, incredible winged figures launched forth upon the brilliant skies. Figures such as their eyes had never before beheld… figures unknown even to their wildest dreams.

Fantastical, gigantic winged creatures with human riders came plummeting down toward them like falling stars. They stared upward, petrified with astonishment.

Except for Arjala. She felt no slightest twinge of fear, only the heady, ecstatic emotion of one who has been mocked and persecuted for an unpopular belief, who beholds herself proven correct after all.

“Fools!” she shrilled, glorious, radiantly beautiful in what she fancied her moment of triumph. “You thought me mad—me, mad! But I was right, in the end, and now you know it. Did I not say my Divine cousins would rescue me from your impious hands?”

Springing from the sky-sled, she threw her bare arms aloft and cried; “Descend, descend, Divinities! Rescue me from these insolent mortals!”

Her companions were too enthralled by the incredible thing floating above them to pay heed to her rantings. And in truth it was an astonishing vision to behold—the vast, clearly artificial, perfectly oval dishlike thing, crowded with fantastic and complicated structures.

So incredible was the flying thing above that they scarcely had time to notice the superhumanly beautiful black men, mounted on the immense blue-feathered hawk-creatures, which came hurtling down toward them from the hovering structure above. It was the hovering thing itself that held them rapt.

For it was a gigantic city… a city floating in the sky.

Chapter 7 The Skymen of Calidar

Janchan stared up, openmouthed in awe, at the incredible thing that floated above them like a metallic cloud. Beside him, Niamh the Fair shrank into the circle of his arms, which closed about her protectingly. She, too, stared in amazement at the incredible sight.

The city was a fantastic affair, a bewildering maze of many-tiered domes, truncated and oddly geometric towers, and strangely-shaped, slender and soaring spires. Everything was built of metal—a strange, brilliantly scarlet metal that flashed and glittered in the rich sunlight.

The style of architecture was bizarre and elaborate, and what they could see of the flying city was exceedingly ornate. The city was built on the upper rondure of an immense, bowl-shaped metal disk which must have been miles in diameter. For all the evidence of its metallic composition, and immensity, it was an undeniable fact that the scarlet city floated weightlessly on the air, no heavier than a cloud or a drifting leaf.

And this only compounded their astonishment. It was incredible that such a city should exist at all, since metals of any kind are extremely rare on the World of the Green Star, or, at any rate, are rare and difficult for the people of the treetop cities to obtain, since they never willingly descend to the actual continental floor of the gigantic forest, which is to them an unexplored abyss of utter darkness, filled with mythological horrors.

But that such a city should fly through the heavens was completely beyond belief, and struck them dumb with amazement. For, however cleverly constructed, or however light the metallic substance whereof the weird scarlet city was built, even the most conservative estimate of its weight would be in the millions of tons. It was so far beyond the technology of the Laonese civilizations, that a Flying City of scarlet metal was completely alien even to their wildest flights of imagination.

Nevertheless, the Flying City was real and actual and solid.

And from the mathematically regular lip of the vast metal saucer on which the city was constructed, giant hawklike flying creatures with plumage of metallic indigo launched themselves into the air and swooped down upon the astounded travelers who stood in a small group on the upper branch of the mighty tree.

It was merely one more amazing fact that these immense blue hawklike predators carried saddles strapped to their shoulders between their wings and at the base of their necks, and that they carried human-seeming riders in these saddles.

That the riders were members of a race or a branch of the human race hitherto unknown to the travelers was but one final incredible fact for their dazed brains to cope with.

The zawkaw—for such, of course, the indigo hawk monsters were—dived toward the branch whereon the four travelers stood dazzled with amazement. Coming to rest on the great branch, their savage hooked talons crunching into the hard wood of the branch as they landed, the zawkaw stared hungrily at the four with bright, flaring eyes. Their godlike riders dismounted from the giant birds and descended to the surface of the branch, and approached the four.

His mind still dazed and uncomprehending, Prince Janchan made no resistance as the riders of the zawkaw disarmed him and bound his wrists behind his back. There was not the slightest chance that he could successfully defend himself against the magnificent black demigods, for they had descended to the branch a full score in number and each of them was fully armed. To have fought at all would have been tantamount to committing suicide.

They were astonishing to look upon, the men from the Flying City. Each was a superb physical specimen, and most were a good head taller than Janchan himself, who was several inches above the height of the average Laonese male. The blackness of their skins was a further cause of amazement to him, for such a variation in skin-coloring was hitherto unknown upon the World of the Green Star. A visitor from the Earth, I should perhaps add here would also have found their appearance surprising. For, despite the darkness of their integument, which was similar to that of the Negro race, their features bore no slightest resemblance to Negroid features, being delicately carved, thin-upped and narrow chinned, with a high-domed and completely hairless skull. Obviously, the brains of the beautiful black men were of a superior order of development beyond the ordinary run of human kind.

Niamh shrank from the touch of the black warriors, but they offered her no insult, merely binding her wrists in a similar manner to Janchan’s, their manner cool, aloof, and impersonal. She could hardly take her eyes off them, and regarded them with amazement and fascination as they went about the business of disarming and binding the four travelers with smooth efficiency and dispatch. It was their incredible physical perfection and the almost superhuman purity and beauty of their features which roused her awe. For their clothing, which consisted quite simply of low sandals and a long narrow length of some sparkling fabric like silver lame—wound about the hips, one end tucked neatly into the waistband with an effect like a cummerbund, the other end draped across the chest and tossed carelessly over the left shoulder—left the rest of their bodies quite bare. And the superhuman degree of physical development, to the point of amazing masculine beauty, left her quite speechless.

If Janchan and Niamh were struck dumb with astonishment, the Goddess Arjala was exhilarated and virtually transformed with exultant joy. Her voluptuous womanly beauty, already remarkably handsome, was flushed and radiant. Her opulent breasts heaved as she panted in transports of bliss. Her glorious dark eyes flashed like perfect gems as she watched the descent and approach of those she unhesitatingly deemed her Divine cousins, the Lords of The World Above. A slight frown creased her brow as she discerned the surprising ebon hue of their skins; for just a moment, the shadow of a doubt dimmed the intensity of her joy.

But then her brow cleared and she shrugged off her momentary twinge of disillusionment. For, in beauty of feature and magnificence of bodily development, they were unquestionably godlike.

It was just that they were… different than she had expected, that’s all.

And in the next moment her doubts returned, and this time they were redoubled.

For her cousins from The World Above made absolutely no reply to her filial greetings. In fact, her welcoming words roused within them not the slightest response of any kind. They did not even pay her any particular attention, merely removed the various objects she wore at her gem-studded girdle, tied her hands behind her, and turned indifferently to give their attentions to Zarqa the Kalood.

It was strange—remarkably strange!

Their eyes, weird orbs of sparkling quicksilver, slid over her indifferently. They dealt with her precisely as they had dealt with her companions, their manner distant, aloof, cool, their minds elsewhere. Her joyous words, her proud claims of kinship, they ignored completely. It was almost as if they did not hear her, or did not comprehend her meaning. Perhaps they were ignorant of the Laonese speech; perhaps they were—deaf?

But that was nonsense, bordering almost on blasphemy. For the gods of the Laonese pantheon are omniscient. They know all, and speak every tongue, and can even read the unspoken thoughts buried in the human heart. And it was inconceivable that they should be deaf, for that condition implies the results of disease or injury or genetic flaw. The gods can suffer no impairment of their faculties, no infirmity of the flesh …

Arjala stared after them with bafflement, almost with fear. It was impossible, it was inconceivable, that they should treat her so. Why… they handled her with such casual indifference, it was almost as if in their eyes she was but an animal, and her speech the inarticulate noise of a brute thing, the braying of a mere—creature.

The four adventurers saw little of the mysterious city in the sky. The beautiful black supermen with the cold, indifferent features and the inscrutable eyes of sparkling quicksilver bundled them onto the giant blue birds, leaving the sky-sled where it lay. Wings of iridescent indigo spread wide, caught the wind, and they rose from the branch and soared in a steep, swooping circle up into the heavens where the Green Star blazed.

The scarlet city expanded before them, curiously designed towers glinting in the sun. The great zawkaw swept up over the curving rim of the enormous metal disk, and arrowed down into the fantastic sky metropolis like homing pigeons flying to their nest.

The travelers caught a swift, transient glimpse of enormous, complicated, multileveled structures—broad avenues fanning cut from a central citadel crowned with soaring spires—then, one by one, the hawks swooped into a circular black opening which yawned in the metal flanks of an immense, bulbous dome.

They found themselves within a tremendous enclosed space with a domelike roof which arched high above their heads. Spikes of the omnipresent red metal thrust out from the curving inner walls of the dome, which walls, they saw, were studded with circular ports, some open, some lidded shut. Roosting on these metal spars were scores of the great blue hawks, some sleeping with their beaked heads tucked beneath a wing, some feeding from troughs filled with raw meat, red and dripping.

The interior of the dome was brightly lit in some manner they could not identify. The noonlike brilliance came from no visible lamps, and the source of the harsh glare remained unknown.

Scarcely had the travelers taken all this in with dazed, uncomprehending eyes before their unspeaking captors whisked them out of the saddle, thrust them into a circular tunnel of glistening metal, and conducted them in small, bullet-shaped cars that moved silently and swiftly on monorail tracks down into the deeper levels of the citadel.

They were swiftly conducted through a series of chambers and antechambers, wherein cold-faced black men worked at incomprehensible mechanisms of sparkling crystal and glinting metal, busying themselves over tasks of an unfathomable nature. Then they were suddenly thrust into a large domed hall through a circular door which slid smoothly and ponderously shut behind them.

They looked about them bewilderedly. The room was immense, lit by the same sourceless illumination they had observed in the great dome of the zawkaw, and the floor was littered with rude pallets whereon dozens of men and women of their own race lay curled in sleep, or squatted, staring at nothing with blank, hopeless expressions.

One of these, an old man, his hair transmuted by age to dull silver, came up to them. His features were wrinkled with age, his form lean, his face weary and scored by suffering. But an unquenchable vitality glowed within him, shining through his eyes, which were bright, alert, inquisitive, and not unfriendly.

“New additions to our company, I see.” He smiled. “Well, be welcome, strangers, to the Flying City of Calidar.”

“Calidar?” Janchan repeated in bewilderment. “But that is the miraculous cloud-kingdom of the Demigods and Avatars in our myths—surely this cannot be—?”

“Of course it is, you mocking mortal!” Arjala sniffed with a gloating smite. “What else could this amazing realm be but the sacred celestial City of the Thousand Gods?”

The old man smiled faintly.

“You have fallen prey to a regrettable delusion, madam,” he said gently. “You will find no gods in residence here—naught but a race of murderous maniacs, who regard us as no more than mindless beasts. But, come, let us introduce ourselves—there will be time aplenty for idle conversation later. I am known as Nimbalim of Yoth, your friend, I hope, and, alas, your fellow captive. Permit me to commiserate with you on thus becoming involuntary members of the Legion of the Doomed…”

In the silence that followed, his last words echoed through the domed immensity of the chamber;

The Doomed… Doomed… Doomed…

Chapter 8 The Legion of the Doomed

Niamh stifled a gasp as the old man gave them his name, and turned her great eyes upon him with astonishment and wonder.

“Nimbalim of Yoth!” she said in hushed tones of awe. “Not, surely, the same Nimbalim of Yoth who composed the celebrated Notes on a Philosophy of Fatalism?”

The weary features of the old man brightened at her words, and his frail figure straightened proudly.

“Ah, can it be my works enjoy a wider popularity than even I could have hoped?” He smiled. “Thank you, child, for recognizing my name; for I am indeed Nimbalim of Yoth, and the only personage of that name, insofar as I am aware… but you pale and look faint, my child. Are you unwell?”

Niamh shook her head doubtfully, still eyeing the silver-haired old man with amazement, an amazement now touched with something very like fear.

“No,” she said faintly, “it is nothing; it’s just that, that…”

“Pray speak your mind, child,” the philosopher murmured encouragingly. “We keep no secrets from each other in this dismal abode. What is it that disturbs you so?”

“It’s just that… that Nimbalim of Yoth, or at least the famous philosopher of that name who wrote the Philosophy of Fatalism…”

“Yes, yes? Speak up, my dear, don’t be shy! What about Nimbalim so distresses you?”

Niamh drew in a deep breath and faced the frail old man squarely.

“You died almost a thousand years ago,” she whispered.

The old philosopher stroked his long, glistening beard with one thin hand. He cocked his head to one side a little, and watched the princess with eyes dim and oddly gentle.

“Has it been so long, then,” he murmured, almost to himself. “Ah, well! One day, or year, or century, is very like another here in the slave pens of the Flying City… still, it is curiously unsettling and strange to realize that while I have been mewed up here among the Doomed… a thousand years have passed among mortal men in The World Below. How strange, and terrible, and wonderful! How very strange …”

Janchan stepped forward and saluted the bent, frail old philosopher.

“I am Prince Janchan of the House of the Ptolnim, Master Nimbalim,” he said, “and this is the Princess Niamh of Phaolon, queen of the Jewel City. How strange it is to speak to Nimbalim of Yoth in the flesh, if indeed you be he… why, I studied your famous works under my tutor when I was but a child, as did my father before me, and my grandsire in his own day… How can it be true, sir, that you have lived all this while in this remarkable place, while in the lower world, among the treetop cities, fifty human generations have been born and lived and died? Why, your very city of Yoth has vanished from human knowledge in the intervening centuries, destroyed by the Blue Barbarians seven centuries ago, during one of their periodic attacks of racial madness…”

Sorrow flickered in the eyes of the frail ancient.

“Ah!” he cried, lifting one thin hand, transparent as wax, as if to ward off a blow. “Is it indeed so? Yoth of the brilliant palaces, the gardens of laughing youths and maidens, the fragrant groves of flowering chinchalia blooms, the great Academy with its grave scholars and cool arcades… gone? All—gone? Of this I had not heard… so much has befallen the world of my youth in the ages of my imprisonment here in the dungeons of Calidar by the murderous, jet-skinned maniacs—!”

Arjala, who had stood listening to this exchange without comment, scarcely without comprehension, as she never read aught but the theological dissertations of her own Temple scholars, drew herself up superbly at this and made a dramatic gesture.

“Watch your tongue, old fool! You mouth vile blasphemy against those of my own Divine lineage! Beware lest the ever listening, ever-watchful Lords of The World Above smite you with their thunders for such imprudent impieties!”

The old man smiled at her haughty speech and glanced inquiringly at Janchan.

“This is the Lady Arjala of Ardha, high priestess of the Temple and Incarnate Goddess, insofar as the opinions of the Ardhanese go.” The Prince smiled.

Nimbalim nodded respectfully, but there was a glint of mischief in his eye.

“My greetings to you, madam,” he said, smiling. “I fear, however, that you are laboring under a misapprehension; if it is your conception that the rulers of this celestial metropolis are the divinities of your mythology, then pray permit me to correct the error in your thinking. For you could not be more wrong in believing the Skymen of Calidar to be divine beings. Whether the Skymen drew the name of their city from the Heavenly City of our ancient religion, or whether the priests of The World Below borrowed the name of the city of the Skymen for their name of the Heavenly City, I neither know nor care. But it is, simply, a fact that the blackmen who rule here are neither gods nor demigods, but an unspeakably cruel race of human monsters—as I fear you will soon discover from your own experience, unfortunately. No, they are no Divinities, the Skymen of the Flying City; they are, instead, naught but another branch of the tree of mankind—a lost branch, one might say, who domesticated the great wild zawkaw of the high terraces in a remote age, and thus strayed into the marvelous Flying Cities and made them their dominion. They have been separated from the rest of the Laonese race for uncounted ages since, and, due to the effects of a closed system of inbreeding over thousands and thousands of years, they have developed the peculiar black skins, hairless pates, and quicksilver eyes that make them seem so very different from us. Alas, these minor racial differences are the lesser and the least important of the ways in which their solitary way of life here in Calidar have made them to diverge from the common human stock. But they are not gods, I assure you… they have become monsters of depravity, in fact, and inhuman in all but the biological sense.”

Arjala opened her mouth to make some rejoinder to this, but Niamh interrupted; the princess, pleading weakness and fatigue, due to the succession of remarkable events which had so swiftly befallen them, begged for a place to sit down so that she might compose herself.

All contrition, the old philosopher led them to a bench of some peculiar lucent material in a far corner of the hall, saw them seated, and dispatched a young boy in a ragged clout for refreshments. To the surprise of the travelers the boy returned with a heavy tray heaped with fresh fruits, berries and nuts, morsels of delicious cheese, and a large beaker of a cold, refreshing, slightly effervescent beverage. Sampling the drink, which was rather like champagne or sparkling burgundy, the travelers fell to this repast with considerable hunger, while Nimbalim struck up a conversation with Zarqa the Kalood.

The Kalood, who required no nourishment other than an infrequent sip or two of the thick golden mead, found an instant basis for friendship with the old philosopher, who so curiously seemed to share his own immortality. The two conversed excitedly while the others dined, and from their exchange a number of surprising discoveries were soon unveiled.

I had thought it likely, Janchan, the Kalood remarked, once the meal was finished, that this was one of the Flying Cities constructed by my own race before their extinction. During a brief flowering of scientific technology, which only lasted fifty thousand years or so, as I recall, some of the Technarchs experimented with aerial contrivances such as this curious metropolis. The cities fly on the identical system used in rendering weightless the sky-sleds, which is to say, by riding the magnetic lines of force generated by the planet itself. Now the learned Nimbalim confirms me in this opinion.

“That’s very interesting, Zarqa,” Janchan said. “But for what conceivable purpose did the Kaloodha build such amazing devices, and where did they obtain such an enormous supply of metal? Why, also, once built, were the Flying Cities abandoned?”

The sad purple eyes of the Winged Man brooded on the distant past thoughtfully.

It was the thought of our savants that by adopting a new mode of life in the skies of Laon, we could sever the bonds which bound us, however remotely, to the brutehood from which we had emerged. That we were akin to the lower beasts was ever a thought which rankled in the hearts of my people, he observed ironically. True, a billion years of evolution stood between us and the red, howling murk of our bestial ancestry, and we had progressed far indeed… halfway to the stars. But this was deemed insufficient, and by adopting a new life in the skies, housed in aerial metropolises of a synthetic metal we manufactured by molecular selection from the inert gases of the upper atmosphere, it was believed we should for all time prove our superiority to our origins. It was this insane pride in our accomplishments, and this denial of our common origin among the animal life, that proved in time the fatal flaw in our civilization. For it led in time to the read quest for immortality—for the perfection of the Elixir of Light—of which I have already spoken. And it was this, as you know, which led to our doom and to the eventual extinction of the Kalood race.

“By an odd coincidence,” the Yothian philosopher interrupted, “much the same poison has tainted the mentality of the Skymen. For they have launched themselves upon the same quest for immortality which in time consumed and destroyed the Winged Men of remote aeons. Over uncounted ages their wise men have managed to decipher the inexplicable records left by the Kaloodha, who built the Flying Cities and then abandoned them as their race began to dwindle and die out. And thus the black men have for ages sought to perfect the lost immortality serum of the Kaloodha, although by this time, in their ignorance and mad arrogance, deeming themselves to be gods, they have permitted themselves to forget the Kalood origins both of the Flying Cities and of the Elixir. By now, the pitiful maniacs have managed to convince themselves that they invented the Flying Cities, and that they are gods. In there experiments to perfect the Elixir, they employ we human cattle from The World Below, whom they deem less than beasts. I represent one of the more successful experiments, for they have managed to lengthen my life-span to a full millennium.”

Niamh was horrified.

“Do you mean to say these creatures use men and women as mere laboratory animals?” she demanded.

The frail ancient nodded, sorrow in his deep eyes.

“It is for this reason that we call ourselves the ‘Legion of the Doomed,’ ” he said. “Day after day the blue hawks are sent out to raid the treetop cities and the savage wandering tribes of The World Below. Those who are captured are imprisoned here for the remainder of their lives. They are doomed beyond hope, beyond even fear. Those who die early in the experiments are the lucky ones; their cadavers go to feed the fierce cannibal zawkaw.”

“And… those who do not die?” asked Janchan.

The features of Nimbalim were somber with an ancient sadness.

“For them the future holds nothing but the knife, the organ transplants… the injection, over and over, of nameless fluids… the merciless blaze of the great lamps whose weird radiance brings madness to some, deformity to others… immortality to a few. We have this horror to face, day after day, for the rest of our lives… is it any wonder that we call ourselves the Legion of the Doomed?”

The old man fell silent then, leaving them to their own grim thoughts. And those thoughts were of the same ghastly tenor… that to this doomed life of hopeless terror they, too, were doomed.

That night, as the strange, sourceless illumination dimmed in the great domed hall, they sought their pallets one by one. Nimbalim set out for them places near the corner of the hall wherein he slept himself, together with a few of the youths whom he tutored in his philosophy.

They tossed and turned, weary from the dreadful experiences of the day, but unable to find solace in restful slumbers.

Janchan stared long into the darkness, thinking of the terrible fate to which they were condemned. The two women were in his charge, and he was responsible for them. He grimly determined to go down fighting, rather than to stand by as they were subjected to inhuman experiments at the hands of the black skinned madmen who thought themselves divinities.

But it would be simple to fight and be slain. So simple, in fact, that it was almost a cowardly escape from the doom which now faced them.

The difficult thing—the impossible, the almost heroic thing—would be to live.

To live in a world controlled by maniacs who used human slaves as men use beasts… a world, moreover, from which there was no possible escape.