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

came a band of Zarouk's tall, long-legged warriors, grinning wolfishly.
    With them they bore three captives—the dancing girl, the old man, and that imp of a boy!
    The three were dragged forth into the gold light of dawn, and it could be seen that their arms and wrists were bound behind their backs by tight leathern thongs. See- _ ing them, the Prince strode forward, a cold smile on his thin, bearded lips. Houm stood smirking, fingering his ; little queue of a goatee. Silence fell—tense, tight, expectant.
    The girl's head was sunk upon her breast, the pale oval of her perfect face veiled beneath the black wings of her long hair.
    Zarouk reached out and took her by the throat.
    "Raise your head, slut!" he snarled. "Open your eyes, that all men may see you as you are, and may know the vile thing you be."
    Valarda lifted her face into the light and looked upon the caravan men and the desert raiders with great golden eyes.
    A shudder as of loathing ran through the crowd. And men began to speak a word, first in a whisper, then in a mutter, then and at last in a growling chant.
    "Zhaggua . . . Zhaggua . . . ZHAGGUA!"
    There was fear in their voices, aye, and contempt, and also hatred. They did not so much utter the despised name as spit it in her face like phlegm.
    But Valarda neither flinched nor let the slightest flicker of emotion shadow her expression of pride and disdain. No haughty French aristocrat ever faced the guillotine during the Terror with such proud disdain, nor with such courage.
    Zarouk chuckled, enjoying the drama of the moment. He showed his white teeth in a leering smile, and his eyes gloated on the three captives. He flung up his head in a bold gesture.
    "What shall we do with this zhaggua and her pack?"
    lie cried. "Dmu, what says The Book? What is the end decreed most fitting for such vermin, and most pleasing to the Timeless Ones?"
    Forth from the throng of tall, robed desert warriors there came shuffling into view a small, old man with the shaven pate and silver ear-sigils of a native priest, his gaunt, bent, wasted form wrapped in dark, dusty robes, his hands lucked into his voluminous sleeves.
    The men made way for him a bit uneasily. Priests are respected on Mars, but not exactly loved. Few even of the devout feel comfortable in their presence. Perhaps they stand too close to the eternal mysteries of creation and judgment and doom, and the gates of life and death, for ordinary men to enjoy their company.
    "The Death of the Slow Fire, lord Prince," the old priest said in a thin, quavering sing-song voice. And his rheumy, lusterless eyes brightened as he said this.
    The men stood silent, glancing at each other. It was a slow, agonizing death the priest had named. The green, flaming chemical that lights the demon-frighting lamps falls drop by searing drop upon the writhing naked body of the condemned. These were rough, hard men, and they loathed Valarda's kind with an ancient loathing. But more than a few turned pale or looked away.
    Houm, however, smiled and licked his thick lips.
    And then the world changed with a crash.
    From nowhere a needle of incandescence flared. It sizzled before the very booted toes of Prince Zarouk, searing a black, smoking line between the desert chieftain and his captives. Almost before the fire-needle vanished, a voice from above rang out, hard and sharp as the crack of a whip.
    "Nobody moves!"
    A hundred eyes searched the upper works of the citadel and found him on the ledge.
    Ryker with his guns out and ready, and the deadly fury of hell naked in his cold, ice-colored eyes.
    They put a league of dust-desert between them and the dead city before Ryker dared let them slow their stride.
    The lopers they had taken were their own, but were well rested from Houm's delay in the city, where he had evidently arrived earlier than convenient for Zarouk to meet him at their prearranged rendezvous. There were doubtless faster slidars to be found among the caravan beasts, but they were