by Don Wilcox
Together Joe and Pudgy replaced the stone in the floor. They made a quiet exit from the basement room. They ascended a dark stairway to the palace corridors.
“Side exit,” Pudgy advised.
With chanting going on in the front and the lavender vine cutting an errant path from the rear, there wasn’t much choice. The corridors of the palace were completely empty, fortunately. No guard remained at his post during the torch lantern services.
They reached the side porch; they quietly ascended to the balcony for a better view of the valley.
The lighted lavender path lay in a curious zigzag pattern over hillsides and through groves of trees. As Pudgy remarked, it looked like a fifty mile bolt of lightning that had frozen and fallen across the ground.
“At the farther end of the lavender vine I’ll find the body of the American girl,” Joe said. “I’m going at once.”
“You’d better set your stakes for a long hike, slave. It will take you all night and half of tomorrow.”
“Aren’t you coming with me?”
The frog boy might not have heard. The chanting voices from the plaza caused him to edge along in that direction for a view of the torch ritual. He sighed. Certain deep emotions had been stirred in him, Joe thought. For all his froggish appearance there was something very human about him.
They were putting out the torches now, extinguishing one after each stanza of their melancholy song. Joe saw that Pudgy was being drawn into the ritual as if by magic. He had begun to sing to himself, and his bright green eyes were shining intently. He climbed down over a trellis, hopped through a fountain, moved quietly into the red light of the last torch and sat there swaying to the music. He ducked back into the fountain when they came too close, but he was a part of the ritual now, and it wouldn’t let him go.
“So long, Pudgy,” Joe said under his breath.
Left to his own devices, Joe waited for a flare of faraway lightning that would reveal a few landmarks. It wasn’t going to be easy, spotting the point where the lavender vine ended.
An hour later he was hiking through the darkness. A few lights through the valley were constant enough to give him his direction.
A few hours later a pink dawn broke through a striped sky. Horizontal lines of hard blue clouds framed the red sun as it rose above the dark mists of the horizon. Sometime in the night the storm had rolled away. And the mysterious river of lavender light across the valley had folded back into itself and melted away in the blackness.
Morning brought news of five deaths in the valley. The trail of the vine was always marked with tragedy. Terror spread as rapidly as the rumors could fly. The lavender vine! Why had it come again? Where did it come from? Was there any reason that it should choose a trail through the lowlands? Had it chosen its victims with a hand to justice? No one knew.
Every group of peasants or slaves that Joe passed was buzzing with excited talk. Every person felt that he might have been one of the victims. It was hungry lightning on the loose. Well, five victims should satisfy its appetite for awhile.
It was going to be easier than Joe had feared, following the trail to the wrecked plane. Every wisp of conversation he overheard guided him. Occasionally other slaves tried to stop him for questions, when their masters weren’t close by. He kept hiking, like a good slave on a cross-country errand. For the most part he was able to slip past the masters and the peasants. At the edge of one village he was tempted to stop and talk with a peasant woman who had paused to admire her pretty face in the brook—or was she only adjusting the blue scarf on her head?
Joe resisted the impulse, however. She hadn’t seen him. He slipped around the village unnoticed and hurried on his way.
Late that afternoon he came to the end of the trail. The crumpled metal of a wrecked air spinner lay scattered across the hillside. Apparently the wreck had not been discovered. It had occurred within the screen of rain and no one had seen it happen. The muddy rain that had gathered on the pieces after the fall showed no signs of having been touched by human hands.
Where was the body of the girl?
Joe searched the hillside until nightfall. It was a vain search. He couldn’t understand it. There was no sign of a victim.
Darkness came over him. Tomorrow he would search farther. Exhausted, he fell asleep on the ground.
He was awakened by his own fitful dreams. He was weak and hungry. Perhaps there would be some food among the wreckage. He staggered back and began to putter around in the darkness.
Far away he could see a row of lights that must have been the palace Reddish lights. He counted nine.
“The religious ritual!” he said aloud. “I wonder if Pudgy is singing with them.”
Having spoken aloud, he stopped to wonder whether anyone might have heard. Several times he had been pleasantly surprised by the unexpected appearance of Pudgy just when he needed company.
“Pudgy!” he called. “Pudgy!”
There was no answer. The dark valley was all his own, he thought. Nothing but black outlines of hills against the dark mists that bordered the starry sky. A few distant lights—villages or lonely farm homes—and a twisting lavender stream of light!
The lavender vine!
It was creeping along the valley like a narrow ribbon of luminous silk over a landscape of black velvet.
It was coming toward him. Its nearest branch not less than five miles away, and moving rapidly. It was coming toward the air spinner again, of course! It would try again tonight to recover the treasure of gems.
“Pudgy!” Joe’s voice sounded tight and scared.
It was coming fast, weaving around the groves of trees, skipping over the tops of rocks. Joe froze in his tracks for a moment fascinated.
A village lay in its path. Strangely, it lifted over the top, like an arched bridge, then struck the ground and skipped, like the path of a skipping stone.
Joe was backing away from the wreckage now. He was suddenly running. It was less than a mile away, and many miles of it were visible. Joe thought of the terrorized people who must be awakening all along the valley from the flare of lavender light in their windows. What persons would be caught within its deadly grip tonight?
The peasant woman? The woman who had stopped to adjust her scarf in the mirror of the brook. Joe couldn’t help thinking of her, wondering—
He stumbled and fell. He scrambled to his feet and raced on around the slope. He had better get well out of range. The vine was coming toward the wreckage by the swiftest possible course. He could see the tip end now. That was the “growth bud”, he thought. It was less than two hundred yards from him. What a fascinating thing. He slackened his retreat long enough to observe its weird form. The growing end was branched like the delta of a river—or like a bolt of lightning that reaches with a cluster of fingers. The fingers lifted over trees and rocks, touched the ground, and lifted again. Where the fingers went the long twisting zigzag arm followed.
A claw of light, Joe thought. No head or face or eyes, but a claw, like a living thing, feeling its way, racing over the land to find the thing it had been sent to find.
Now it came to the wreckage. The lavender fingers played over the fragments. Nothing moved from the ground, light glinted from pieces of metal and glass. But nothing lifted. It was like some monster musician running his electric fingers over a mute instrument. Nothing moved. Nothing sounded.
Joe was hypnotized by the sight. He wanted to creep closer. If only he knew what Pudgy knew about controlling this runaway power!
The lavender vine gave a surprise leap away from the wreckage. Its fingers struck the hillside twice, elongating, jumped furiously through the blackness. They leaped at Joe and caught him. For an instant he felt the tingle of something mildly warm and electrical pulsating through his body. Then the pressure of the lavender claw tightened. A whirl of colored images blinded him and then everything was black and he was devoid of feeling.
CHAPTER VIII
On the same morning that Joe had
watched the red sun rise through the striped clouds, an American girl had walked through the same Karridonzan Valley, wondering what the new day would bring forth.
Marcia Melinda knelt over the pool and studied her reflection carefully. There wasn’t much more she could do to disguise herself as a peasant woman. She simply wasn’t going to cut her hair Karridonza fashion. No one would know as long as she wore the dark blue scarf.
A few low white clouds scuffed away into the purple mists beyond the valley. The bright light of day was her enemy today. She mustn’t let her identity be discovered. And yet she must get to a village somewhere. Somewhere she would find the right person.
She wondered—would the light of her secret purpose show in her countenance, to give her away? She must avoid meeting people.
What a stormy night it had been. Not one storm but several! That terrifying ride in the air spinner would certainly have been fatal, however, if it hadn’t been for the rain. The rain had obscured her from view as soon as she took to the air, and she was able to parachute down at once, unseen by the watchers at the palace.
As if she hadn’t known what Nitticello was up to, when all of those elaborate gifts came forth! Making her sign that friendship document. The murder in his eyes had shown too plainly. Her fear had been that the American slave would be allowed to accompany her. And that certainly would have been fatal for him. It had been an inspiration for her to urge them to let him come. That alone was enough to guarantee that Nitticello would not permit it.
“The American . . . I wonder what he’s like.” She was somewhat astonished to realize how much interest she had taken in him at first sight. The kiss had been a dodge, originally—anything to avoid that arrogant guard. But the tall, well-built American had looked at her so imploringly—and then so gratefully. . .
She wondered whether he, as an American, was as mystified over Karridonzan ways as she. Had he seen that weird vein of light that crawled through the valley last night? That must have been the lavender vine they talked about. She had heard legends of the deaths it had wrought. She had been less than a mile away from the wrecked air spinner when it appeared. That was one danger she hadn’t foreseen.
She couldn’t help pondering—did someone at the palace hold a control over that phenomenon? It had come from that direction. It might have been sent to overtake her. She glanced at the cloth bag that hung innocently front her arm. She quickened her step.
“They’ll soon discover that my body isn’t to be found among the wreckage,” she thought. “And all the riches they lavished on me shall have vanished.” Then the search would be on all over the land, she knew, and her life wouldn’t be worth the smallest pearl in her collection.
Before high noon she had talked with the slaves in three different fields along the way. Had they any thoughts of fighting for their freedom?
The answers had been guarded. Was she a member of some organized group? Had she attended any meetings? Did she know what had happened at Rodroot Hill?
“Please believe me,” she would reply, “please, place your faith in me. I want to help. I know where to get some rich gifts that can be sold for money.”
The slaves were suspicious. But they might be willing to trust her if she would attend their secret meetings.
“As to the gifts, you should take them to the merchant Nadoff when you reach the village,” one slave had told her. Others along the way quickly agreed that Nadoff would help. “Yes, Nadoff is the one. He will take you to the right place to sell your treasure.”
Her feet were aching, and she was hungry and weary long before she reached the village. She was put to the limits of her ingenuity, dodging the slave masters and travelers along the way, or inventing excuses for her passing conversations with the slaves. At one village she gave the story that she was wandering across the land looking for her lost son who, she thought, had been sold into slavery.
“Your son?” The slave master who had queried her frowned and remarked that she certainly wasn’t old enough to be the mother of a grown son. In fact, he doubted, from her accent, whether she was a native Karridonzan. “But you’re pretty enough,” the slave master had concluded with a meaningful light in his eye. “And if you’re straying around homeless, I can find a shelter for you.”
She hurried on, drawing her blue scarf tight around her throat. Outside the village she stopped at a brook to darken the rings under her eyes and to add years to her make’iip.
Late that afternoon she came to the village where Nadoff lived. She found him to be a round, jolly merchant who could laugh loud enough to make the vases on his shelves ring. He gave her the heartiest of receptions.
“I have something quite private I wish to discuss,” she said. “I have some valuable jewels in my possession—the finest you have ever seen.” Nadoff swallowed hard and then burst into an uproar of laughter. “You’re joking. What fine jewels do you have?”
“Have you heard that an earth girl has recently visited the king? I am that girl. Yesterday, when I started to leave, the king and the prime minister gave me some gifts of jewels. I’d like to use them to help your oppressed people—the slaves.”
Nadoff was suddenly serious. His deep laughter might have been parked on the shelf with the vases for the remainder of their discussion. It was obvious that the secret movement of the slaves was close to his heart.
His face darkened with a look of disbelief. He wanted to ask a hundred questions at once, but when she opened the bag and he caught sight of the jewels, he was, for the moment, stunned to silence. He motioned her to follow, and led her into a back room.
“Now we can talk,” he said. “Tell me, right from the beginning—”
It wasn’t easy for her to cut away the curtains of suspicion. After she had talked with him for an hour, relating her experiences at the palace, he called two friends in, and she repeated her story.
“So you see they are mine,” she concluded. “Is it too much risk for you to try to sell them, and use the money as I have suggested?”
Nadoff and the other two men considered. Finally Nadoff said, “Tonight there will be a secret meeting not far from here. Would you like to attend? I must warn you, we never know when we may be discovered by the Sashes, but you seem to be so sincere . . .”
“I’ll be honored to attend,” Marica said.
CHAPTER IX
Nitticello couldn’t get an answer out of the frog boy. He spent the afternoon trying various tortures on the lad—a pleasant way to pass the hours, if one is versed in the arts of inflicting pains upon others. To Nitticello, pleasure was pleasure, and the more he could make some guilty soul shriek, the more he enjoyed himself.
The frog boy had been discovered on the previous night during the latter part of the torch lantern ceremony. One of the Sashes had remembered Pudgy. A nuisance. A little misshapen vagabond who was always getting himself under foot at the gates of the fortress. He had been told many times before to stay away. And here he was, participating in one of the religious rituals as proudly as if he might have been a second cousin to the king.
Whips apparently had little effect upon Pudgy, the prime minister had observed. And the application of hot irons always caused the elusive little fellow to leap out of reach, even though he had been chained. Chains didn’t hold Pudgy. He was a slippery, amorphous creature and one could no more bind him than nail down a shadow. But when cornered, he would scream with pain, whether he was being touched or not, and although Nitticello couldn’t be sure that the pain was real, the effect was satisfying. However, Nitticello’s question about the American slave brought no answer from Pudgy. And in this regard, the ordeal was a failure.
“I’ve tried everything,” the prime minister told the king that evening. “I don’t believe that damned frog child knows the answer. The slave has gotten away without leaving a trace.”
The king was about to suggest a course of action. As usual, the prime minister beat him to it.
“I suggest, Arvo, that we dispatch
some Sashes to scour the country. He can’t have gone far on foot. He should be brought back—”
“Oh should he be returned to his master?” the king offered, as if debating his own decision rather than sounding out his adviser.
“He should be brought here,” the prime minister said-decisively. “The law on that point is plain.”
The king said no more. He led the way to the basement cavern. Again the night’s chanting had commenced around the lanterns on the plaza. That was the best time to invite the lavender vine—when the rest of the court wouldn’t know. Tonight it was Nitti’s purpose to complete the unfinished business of recovering the jewels.
King Arvo had come to a turning point. The mental agony of being dominated by this little wrinkled old sadist must be brought to an end. Tonight Arvo would begin. The first matter that came up for a decision would be the starting point. He would make his own decision, and he would force it down Nitti’s throat.
Perhaps the drastic action Nitticello had taken against the American girl had brought Arvo’s dilemma to a crisis. He had spent a sleepless night of remorse. Remorse and resolution. Remorse for his own indecisiveness. Resolution to break the domination.
Yes, King Arvo was going to rule. And Nitticello was going to obey—or lose his office!
The bluish-white light from the lantern illuminated the cavern beneath the palace. The two men crossed to their usual station. Nitticello was being pessimistic. He doubted whether the king could invoke the lavender vine two nights in succession. Arvo said to himself, “He’s challenging me. My powers over the vine are still a mystery to him.”
The light was extinguished. All of the king’s pent up feelings gave weight to his voice as he went through the hoarsely whispered, “Seevia . . . Seevia . . . Seevia.”
He felt a glow of triumph, then, when the trunk of the pinkish blue light began to form out of the blackness, he moved back. Swiftly the strands of silken lavender reached their arms out over the cliff and down into the valley. Nitticello would see. From this hour forward Arvo would prove himself a tower of strength. He flexed his muscles. He thought of the similarly fine physique of the American slave. Power, confidence stubborn determination. Those were the qualities that belonged with a sturdy build and powerful muscles.