Free Lin Carter - The City Outside the World by Lin Carter Page A

this night light, which the Martians leave burning when they sleep, believing that green light repels the night-wandering apparitions and vampiric demons of the dark which throng their old mythology, he saw nothing suspicious.
    It was merely a superstition, of course, but a night light sometimes comes in handy. As now, for instance, Ryker could see that no one was there.
    From beyond the half-open door he heard the distant mutter of men in the suites below, being awakened to replace the guards. From the courtyard beyond his unshuttered window, he heard the beasts stirring in their sleep, and the restless clatter of their splay-footed feet against the worn old tiles.
    The early morning was so still that he could hear even these faint, far, familiar sounds.
    What, then, had startled him into awakening so suddenly?
    Then he felt the night-chill against his heart. And knew that his garments were disarranged—and not by him.
    His thermals were held together by pressure seams, which could not easily be opened. But something had opened them, laying naked the flesh above his heart.
    A dim premonition stirred within him, then.
    For around his neck in a leather bag he wore the black seal he had found in the ancient tomb.
    Now, why on Earth—or on Mars—would anybody be interested in that?
    9. "ZHAGGUA!"
    Perhaps it had not been anyone after the black seal at all, he reasoned to himself. For, after all, it still lay snug and safe in the little leather bag he wore suspended about his neck on a thong. To make certain of this, he opened the bag, took out the carven piece of heavy black crystallike stone and examined it closely by the green glow. Then he put it away.
    Perhaps his thief in the night had simply been that—a thief. Thieves seek valuables—currency, coins, gems. And Ryker's pockets were bare of these things, God knew! He grinned sourly, shrugged, and lay back in the folds of his cloak, composing himself to snatch what little of the night was left before he must rise to the duties of the day.
    But he had drunk deeply of the strong wine the night before, watching Valarda dance naked before the men, and the pressure of his kidneys goaded him reluctantly from the room to seek a privy.
    There was a dry well in the courtyard where the slidars were tethered, he remembered. He headed downstairs for it. But at the head of the stairway he froze motionless, straining his ears, his gun out and ready.
    There were men ascending the stairs, many men, moving with furtive stealth, keeping as quiet as was possible.
    Ryker knew this by blind, unreasoning instinct. He had
    been pursued and hunted in his time, and men walk in a different way when they are trying to creep up on someone without being seen or heard, than when they are just trying not to awaken their sleeping comrades.
    He melted into the shadows then, and when the band of men reached the head of the stair he was nowhere to be seen.
    It was out in the open at last. The time of lies and cunning wiles and impostures was over with. Whatever (his thing really was, however ugly, it was about to reveal itself.
    Dawn broke dim gold in the east, and the caravan was in an uproar. During the early morning a band of desert warriors had come riding into the dead city, bearing with them an Earthling captive. The presence of the captive, an old man with white hair, surprised no one. The surprise was that the warriors had ridden in without the alarm being sounded.
    For Houm himself, and the two strangers who had shared his carpet with him at the drinking of wine last night, were dressed and awake and waiting at the gate to welcome the newcomers.
    Word flew from mouth to mouth that the tall, hawk-faced stranger of the night before, who had watched Valarda dance with cold, searching, yet avid eyes, was Prince Zarouk himself, the desert marauder of the south of whom all had heard much, and little that was to their taste.
    But further surprises were in store.
    Down from the third story of the citadel