The Zanthodon MEGAPACK ™: The Complete 5-Book Series

by Lin Carter

  “And the wench?” he demanded between clenched teeth.

  Achmed shrugged. “Let her go, my captain! She was a beauty, but there are many beautiful women at home, and we have been long at sea without them. Let us return to El-Cazar, for what, after all, is one woman more or less?”

  The Barbary chieftain spat contemptuously.

  “She is much to me, white-livered dog of a Moor! If Achmed is enfeebled by age and has lost the pride of honor and manhood, let him take his place among the toothless grandsires and the gossiping women. I am a man-and I will have what I desire! Now dispatch the search parties and get the men ashore, and let us get on with this business without further words of cowardice. For I will have the girl.…”

  Achmed sighed, inwardly stung, but composed his features according to their normal obsequiousness. And turned away to do his master’s bidding.

  “By the Sacred Well of Zemzem,” he muttered under his breath, “it is folly to waste this much bother over just another woman, for one is very like another, and none of them is worth a moment’s thought or concern.”

  But he bade the men into the boats and watched them row in to the shore, leaning moodily on the rail, with a strange foreboding gnawing at the roots of his soul.

  For Achmed was the seventh son of a seventh son, and was given to inklings of the events yet to come in the womb of unborn time. And Achmed had a cold presentiment that his lord’s overwhelming passion for the girl savage was rash and perilous, and would lead to disaster.

  * * * *

  Within the black mouth of the cave, Hurok of Kor found naught that lived, although at various times in the past this hole in the rock had been the lair of beasts or flying reptiles. His nostrils told him this, for the sharp, acid reek of guano droppings was harsh in the motionless air, and also the guano smeared under his bare feet.

  So low-roofed was the cave that the burly Neanderthal warrior had to walk virtually doubled over, and in more than a few places the closeness of the quarters forced him to go on all fours.

  With the first turn of the tunnel, the wan luminance of distant daylight was shut off, and blackness closed about him, absolute and impenetrable. The air became stale and vitiated.

  Originally, it had been the intention of Hurok merely to penetrate far enough into the farther recesses of the cavern to be safe from any attempt the thakdol might make to get at him. And he had planned to lurk within only until he could safely presume the winged reptile to have flown off in quest of other, more accessible prey. For Hurok was an old hunter, and he knew that the minuscule intellect of the giant reptiles could only entertain one thought at a time and that tenacity of purpose was beyond their limited means.

  But once within the black hole, it occurred to the Apeman to explore his hiding place to its end. Not only would this serve to while away the tedium of waiting for the thakdol to give up and hunt elsewhere, but it was always wise, when taking refuge in an unknown place, to discover if it has another exit.

  A refuge that has only one way in or out savored more to Hurok of a trap than a refuge.

  Before long the cavern walls widened out a bit and soon the jagged roof lifted until Hurok could walk erect without danger of hitting his head on a rock invisible in the dense gloom. Also, the air began to freshen a bit, which suggested to Hurok that some other opening in the rocky roof somewhere connected with the outer world beyond the cave’s entrance.

  No longer did the droppings of beasts squelch underfoot, nor did the quickening breeze waft to his nostrils the stenches that are characteristic of a beast’s lair or a thakdol’s nest.

  Suddenly, a shower of icy water drenched the Apeman from head to foot. Ducking aside, he discovered something far above his head that resembled a miniature waterfall. The little cataract dribbled from some unseen orifice in the rocky wall far above; whether it was large or small, that aperture, Hurok had no way of knowing. But he let the water dribble into his cupped palms and drank thirstily, for the exertion demanded by his ascent of the mountain had wearied him and his throat and lips were parched.

  Having drunk his fill, Hurok was aware of two further necessities, for rest and nutriment. And, since he could do nothing to assuage the hunger that growled in his belly, the huge fellow stoically ignored it and composed himself for slumber. The men of Zanthodon, bathed in the perpetual noon of its unwavering glare, know nothing of day or night and do not divide time in any manner. They simply eat when they are hungry, drink when they thirst and sleep any time they feel weary.

  Hence, it was perfectly logical for Hurok to curl up beside the rocky wall, having found a smooth place in the floor, and to yield to sleep.

  When he awoke, Hurok neither knew nor cared whether he had slumbered for an hour or a day, as such terms were meaningless to his kind. He yawned and stretched, spat phlegm and scratched rising, he drank deeply once more from the little waterfall. Then he continued forward, although he debated briefly whether to continue in the direction he had been heading or to retrace his steps to the cave entrance.

  But, turning in his sleep as men are accustomed to doing, Hurok realized that he had lost all awareness of direction, and that there was nothing else to do but continue on until he dropped of starvation or found a way out of this black cavern.

  As he felt his way along, one hand touching the wall, one foot at a time testing the floor against ravines or chasms concealed by the darkness, Hurok resigned himself to the almost certain fact of my death. Surely, by now, the foes who had pursued me had long since caught up with their prey, thought Hurok. Whatever emotions this assumption roused in his heart I will not presume to guess; but he came of a savage race who stare daily into the grinning jaws of death, their most constant and loyal companion. And men fall to human foes or to the great beasts that rule the wilderness or to disease, while those that survive them go on.

  And Hurok had the indifference to such things of which the Stoics boast.

  But if he was too late to save me from my foes, Hurok solemnly resolved to see me avenged before returning home to rejoin his people on the island of Ganadol. It was the least and last thing he could ever do for Eric Carstairs, and the plain and honest justice of revenge would at least help him to forget the only man who had ever been his friend except his brethren of the Drugars.

  And then, quite suddenly, Hurok ran into a wall.

  Well, he didn’t exactly run into it headlong, for he was and had been for some time feeling his way along with caution and care. But, quite unexpectedly, the Apeman found his path barred from any farther continuance by a smooth wall of dressed and mortared stone.

  That is not to say that Hurok knew what dressed and mortared stone was, for none of the tribes of Zanthodon familiar to him were capable of erecting masonry. But he recognized the barrier to be the work of intelligence, through the regularity of the shapes of the individual stones whereof the wall was composed.

  “What men could live here, in the black bowels of the world, shut off from the light of day?” he muttered aloud, puzzledly, scratching his matted head with one horny nail.

  Then the hackles raised on his nape and along his spine. For it had occurred to the Neanderthal that perhaps this place was sujat…and better to be avoided. Now sujat is a sort of all-purpose word used by the folk of Zanthodon to describe what we of the Upper World would call a religious or supernatural experience. Sujat, to them, describes anything strange, uncanny or inexplicable. The fever that strikes strong men down in their tracks, the dreams that haunt them in slumber, the madness of a disordered intelligence—all of these are sujat. The word incorporates everything we would describe as totem or taboo, sacred or infernal, and all mysterious and frightening phenomena.

  And a man-made wall, here in this black hole in the side of the mountain, was very definitely sujat as far as Hurok was concerned.

  He prowled the length of the bar
rier, touching it gingerly from time to time to ascertain that it still existed. At this point, the cavern widened into a considerable breadth, and so it took the Apeman some time to reach the farther end.

  And when he did, he found a door.

  Unlike the wall, the door was built of wood, and the wood was old and rotten. It creaked uneasily when Hurok set his shoulder against it and heaved. With not too much effort, he broke it open. Sujat this place might be or not, his curiosity had got the better of him. And if sujat it was, then probably he was already doomed; and if doomed, well, at least he could have the pleasure of satisfying his curiosity before the taboo took its toll.

  The rotten wood yielded before the pressure of his shaggy shoulders, and the rusty hinges gave way with a shriek. Ripping the wreckage away, Hurok peered within. An enormous dimly lit chamber met his eyes, its farther wall holding a row of black, rectangular openings which he knew must be doorways leading to other parts of this amazing hollow mountain.

  Holding his weapons at the ready, alert for the slightest sign of danger, Hurok entered the huge open room. The roughness of the cavern floor had been smoothed away and the floor itself was now tiled with flagstones. A faint light pervaded the vastness of the chamber and the light came from odd-looking torches clamped here and there along the walls. They burned dimly, shedding just enough light for the Korian to see by. But it puzzled him that the illumination should be so faint; it must, he decided uneasily, have been the deliberate choice of the as yet unknown denizens of the mountain, for even the Drugars knew how to fashion crude torches from dry wood, and they burnt more brightly than these.

  He crossed the immense room and peered within the doorways. Each opened into a corridor, and some of these were lit by the queer torches while others were not. From the unilluminated hallways came unpleasant stench, as of slimy rottenness overlaid with a sickish sweet smell Hurok knew but could not at once identify.

  Entering at random one of these openings, Hurok prowled its length and found many doors, some barred and some unbarred. Peering cautiously within several of these he discovered them to be storerooms filled with stocks and provisions. Dried meats dangled on hooks set in the ceiling beams, and barrels were filled with various fruits and quantities of round, hard breads.

  No longer need he suffer the pangs of hunger, Hurok realized with considerable relief. Taking down one of the slabs of dried meat, he bit off a mouthful and chewed and swallowed. It was of an odd texture and a flavor unfamiliar to him, but it was certainly nourishing enough.

  Satisfying his appetite with the fruits, the meat and the bread, Hurok left the chamber and continued his cautious explorations.

  Without warning he emerged onto a sort of balcony without railings which hung over a lower level. Peering down over the edge, he saw a dim lit room even larger than the first chamber he had seen. And therein were a considerable number of panjani, both warriors and shes, all of them stark naked.

  They sat or lay or crouched about the stone chamber, some alone and some huddled into small groups. And there were children among them, he saw. They were of a different tribe of the panjani, he noticed, for their hair was redder than his own, their skins much whiter than the warriors of Thandar—indeed, they were unhealthily pale. Also, they seemed listless and wan, as if long held captive by some unknown foe.

  Abruptly, he heard the sound of marching feet. And there came into the chamber a number of curiouslooking individuals, armed with weapons unfamiliar to Hurok. They were short little men; with bandy legs, and complexions peculiarly sallow, clad in odd, complicated garments such as the Apeman of Kor had never before seen. With harsh, squawking cries and blows of whip and cudgel, they herded along between them the naked, listless folk who had been sprawled dreamily about the chamber, but who scrambled fearfully to their feet as the crooked-legged little men came among them.

  They were formed into two lines, the naked people of the caverns, by the barking little men in the odd garments. And it was only now that Hurok noted with puzzlement that the little men with the whips and cudgels had hairless heads and beardless faces, a style previously unknown to him.

  And then it was, as Hurok watched, helpless to interfere, far above the cavern floor, that there transpired a scene so atrocious and appalling that it was worse than any nightmare.

  Sick with growing horror and revulsion, the huge Apeman of Kor looked on, as—

  CHAPTER 10

  The People of the Caverns

  When One-Eye came pelting toward us across the sward, the monster which pursued him emerged into view, shouldering through the underbrush between the trees. From its shaggy, reddish coat, heavy, bisonlike head and the breadth of those massive and terrible horns, we recognized it at once.

  To the folk of Zanthodon it was the goroth; but Professor Potter had earlier identified it as the mighty aurochs, the prehistoric and long extinct ancestor of the bull.

  For a moment, the huge, shaggy creature paused, eyeing the four puny men in its path. Then, lowering its heavy head, which it shook from side to side, and tearing at the earth with one ponderous forehoof, it gathered itself for the charge. And came thundering across the greensward toward us like an express train.

  Directly in its path, and waddling toward us with all the speed his bow-legs could command, One-Eye peered fearfully over his shoulder as the earth shook underfoot from the goroth’s tonnage. Squalling with terror, the Apeman flung himself out of the path of the great bull-so close did it come that the tip of one horn sheared through the flesh of One-Eye’s shoulder. Clutching at the injured part, red blood leaking between his fingers, the Drugar yelled, curled fetally in the trampled grasses.

  Xask, white to the lips, rose to his feet, staring with wide wild eyes at the oncoming goroth. Then, snatching up the .45 automatic, he ran to the left, skirting the edge of the boulders that lay strewn about near the flanks of the mountains. The last I saw of him, he was dwindling into the distance, running for his life without looking back.

  Fumio stood there, shaking like a leaf, licking his lips and looking indecisively from right to left. Then he bolted in the opposite direction.

  Which left me smack in the middle, and right in the path of the goroth, who came thundering down upon me like a runaway locomotive.

  I had been sitting propped up against a boulder, with my wrists and forearms bound behind my back. Now this is an uncomfortable position to be sitting in, and a position from which it is peculiarly difficult to get to your feet, especially without the use of your arms. The only thing I could do was to roll over, which I did, and squirm and wriggle until the huge round rock was between the aurochs and myself.

  The prehistoric bull came to a stop just before he would have rammed into the boulder. He snorted thunderously at me, then went trotting off in the direction in which Fumio had fled.

  Which left me alive, at least, but also alone. And bound and helpless.

  After a while, by bracing my shoulders against the rock, I managed to push and wriggle to my feet, minus a square inch or two of skin which had rubbed off against the rough stone. And I caught my breath, grateful to be alive, but wondering what to do next. A man alone in this savage wilderness has small chance of survival without weapons, and Xask had carried off my automatic.

  A man whose arms are tied behind his back has no chance at all of staying alive for very long. I would be a late-afternoon brunch for the first reptilian monstrosity to come stalking by. You can’t run very well with your arms tied behind your back, and you certainly can’t climb a tree to get out of reach. So the first problem I had was to free my hands somehow.

  A little stream meandered through the woods on its way down to join the steamy waters of the Sogar-Jad. And something occurred to me that might just find a way out of my predicament. So I went across the grassy space between the boulders and the trees, waded out into the deepest part of the str
eam and sat down in the cold, rushing water. I leaned back, resting against a small rock in midstream, so that my hands and arms were under the surface. And then I waited with as much patience as a man can be expected to have when he is completely helpless in a world filled with gigantic monsters and primitive savages.

  It took about thirty minutes.

  You see, it had occurred to me that Fumio had bound my wrists and upper arms with rawhide thongs. He had bound them tightly enough, I assure you. But rawhide expands when immersed in water. And the trick I had thought of was that the stream just might loosen my bonds enough for me to wriggle free of them.

  Well, it did work. After a half-hour or so, the thongs tied about my wrists grew slack enough for me to free myself of them. The straps which bound my upper arms were a little harder to wriggle out of, but before long I climbed out of the stream and sat on the bank, rubbing my hands and arms vigorously, chafing them to get the numbness out, and suffering all the agonies of returning circulation.

  I was still doing this a while later when a shadow fell over me and I looked up to see One-Eye grinning nastily down at me, a heavy club hovering over my head.

  I groaned inwardly: “out of the frying pan, into the fire,” as they say.

  But, anyway, at least I wasn’t alone any more.

  * * * *

  As he progressed, the cavern within the hollow mountain became a maze of chambers and tunnels and levels. The Professor was amazed at the sophistication of the masonry, the roof braces, the ventilation. Whatever race had devised this labyrinth, this fantastic city built within a mountain, had achieved far higher standards of technology than he would have thought possible for a world so primitive in all other ways.

  From time to time he encountered other humans such as himself. To his astonishment, these paid him no attention at all and merely went about their business, viewing his presence with utter indifference.