Free Princess of Amathar by Wesley Allison Page A

just as he had finished striking down the only remaining foe. His sword began to fade into darkness.
    "What’s all this?" I asked.
    "This is a band of Kartags," said Norar Remontar, turning on his small flashlight and pointing it at several prone figures. "They burst out of a hidden door while I was in the chamber alone, and knocked me out with a well placed blow to the head. I was lucky to regain consciousness before they were able to do whatever it was that they were planning to do to me."
    I looked at the beings lying dead in the circle of artificial illumination on the floor. They would have been about five feet tall when standing and they reminded me of a large rat, at least as far as their faces were concerned. They had legs designed for upright locomotion, and two sets of arms on their upper torso. Their dirty, wrinkled skin was a dull grey color, and hairless, reminding me quite a bit of the way rodents look just after they are born. Though they wore no type of clothing, they did wear simple leather harnesses upon which they carried crude hand-made stone tools.
    "The Kartags are well-known to my people," said my Amatharian friend. "They live by scavenging from more civilized beings."
    "I kind of got that impression from looking at them," I replied. "It is lucky that you were able to rescue yourself. If it hadn't been for the soul in your sword, Malagor and I would never have found you."
    "It may have been lucky for us that they attacked me. This subterranean passage may be a considerable short cut home to Amathar."
    "If we don't get lost," I replied. "Right now I don't think I could even tell which direction we should be heading."
    "If I am not mistaken,” said the knight, "Malagors have a very highly developed sense of direction." We both turned to Malagor, who grunted and pointed in a direction, presumably the right one. The three of us started off in the way indicated. The room seemed to go on forever.
    "What possible purpose could this room have had?" I asked.
    "I am certain that I don't know," replied Norar Remontar, "but this is not uncommon in Orlon sites, at least as far as I can recall from my schooling as a child. The Orlons created vast underground cities and cavern networks, with many hidden doors and strange rooms, but never any furniture."
    "Have you ever seen what they looked like?"
    "I could be mistaken, but I do not believe that there have ever been any remains or representations of the Orlons found--no pictures, no statues, no tombs."
    "Interesting,” I said, though by this time I was far less impressed by the fact that an ancient race had left no trace of themselves behind, than I was by their ability to create a seemingly endless subterranean room with no visible means of structural support. We seemed to have traveled at least another mile in the room since Malagor and I had found Norar Remontar, though in the all pervasive darkness the distance might have been one tenth or ten times that distance. In that time we had not seen a pillar or brace for the ceiling. Of course we could have been passing them in the darkness without noticing them, but somehow I didn't believe that to be the case.
    "I don't know about you two," I said, stopping, "but I need to take a rest." Norar Remontar and Malagor both agreed to stop for a little while, though neither admitted to needing a rest themselves, so we sat down in the immense darkness.
    "I am very hungry," said Norar Remontar.
    "I am hungry too," said Malagor. "And what is worse, my dinner is roasting outside this mountain, and I will not be able to retrieve it before it is burnt to a crisp."
    "If it is any consolation," I interjected, "I'm sure an animal has already made off with it by now."
    "It is not any consolation at all," Malagor said.
    Sitting in the endless darkness of the seemingly endless room, with only the Amatharian flashlight to brighten our surroundings, seemed to me like floating in the darkness of space, with nary a planet nor a single star