In the Green Star's Glow
- Автор: Картер Лин Спрэг
- Серия: Green Star Rises #5
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: Научная фантастика
Электронная книга - «In the Green Star's Glow». Краткое содержание книги:
But he was also an Earthling, whose helpless body lay in suspended animation in a guarded mansion in New England. It was his alien mind that drove Karn through perils that no other wold dare...
In the Green Star's Glow is a science fantasy novel in the tradition of Edgar Rice Burroughs. Written by American author Lin Carter, it is the final book in his Green Star series. It was first published in 1976.
In conversation with the master-smith, Zorak discovered that the armament program had only very recently been accelerated to a new pitch. Xargo explained that only recently the king or chieftain of the ant horde had given orders that the team of smiths was to quadruple its endeavors.
When Zorak inquired as to the reason of the king-ant—a ferocious-looking giant insect whose name was Rkhith—Xargo looked thoughtful.
“Rkhith has taken a human slave only shortly before you yourself were made prisoner,” growled the burly smith. “He must be a very clever man, this new slave, for he has risen overnight to a position of considerable authority over his fellow captives. In fact, he has the ear of Rkhith himself, if I may use the term in respect to a creature who has no such organs of hearing!”
“And what does this new slave have to do with arming the insect horde?” asked Zorak.
The smith shrugged truculently. “Only the Gods know,” he growled. “But scuttlebutt in the slave-pens has it that this fellow is a turncoat, a cunning renegade who would lead the kraan against the treetop cities. He seems to have painted such an alluring picture of the wealth and lavish possessions of one forest kingdom in particular, that for the first time in all their history the red ant horde will soon attempt to conquer one of the cities of men. It is for this reason that the horde is being armed with every available weapon, and with such speed as we smiths can perform our tasks.”
“What city do you refer to?” inquired Zorak.
“Phaolon,” replied the smith.
A day or two after this conversation, Zorak had the opportunity to see for himself the traitorous turncoat who would guide the insect horde against the fairest of the cities of men.
The chance came during a tour of inspection that afternoon, when Rkhith came in person to observe the progress Xargo’s men had made with the new “crop” of weapons.
The insect warlord was a veritable monster of his kind, his armored thorax adorned with sparkling gems and plates of precious metals, for all the world like a human conqueror.
Amid the warlord’s sizable retinue of kraan guards and the elite of the warrior ants walked only one human being. He was a slender man of sensitive, even aristocratic mien, and one of indeterminate age.
For all that he was a member of the human species, which the kraan despised as inferior to their own kind, he went clad in silken raiment very unlike the filthy rags worn by the other slaves of the horde.
Even more oddly, his skin was a distinct and unusual color. Most of the Laonese races have complexions which range from tawny or sallow yellow to the hues of parchment or old ivory. But the pigmentation of Rkhith’s favorite personal slave was an odd and rare color. He was blue.
As the giant king-ant came crawling down the double row of sword-blade casting vats, the human workers bent busily over their tasks.
None bent lower or seemed busier than Zorak of Tharkoon.
The fumes of the seething chemical froth served to veil his features, and as he bent over the vat with his back turned to the crawling monster insect, Zorak hoped that no one in Rkhith’s retinue would take any notice of him. The reason for this was that the silk-clad slave who strolled casually at Rkhith’s side might well have recognized Zorak had he seen his face.
For Zorak had seen his face, and knew him instantly.
It was Delgan.
10.
On the March
For days thereafter, the insect-creatures kept Xargo and his assistants busy night and day at the crystal breeding vats. The manufacture of weapons, however, was a process that could not be hurried, which did not exactly please Rkhith; however, there was nothing within the power of the ant warlord which might accelerate the procedures of nature.
Daily the red ant warriors practiced with their new weapons, while gradually marching in what Zorak correctly presumed to be the direction of Phaolon. Clasping spears or swords in their forelimbs, the enormous chitin-mailed creatures made the most formidable opponents imaginable. Zorak grimly lamented the destiny of Phaolon, or of any of the other cities of men unfortunate enough to attract the enmity of the scarlet horde.
But there was nothing he could do about it.
From conversations he had overheard back on the isle of Komar, the Tharkoonian archer was well aware that Niamh the Fair was the hereditary Princess of Phaolon. He had never seen or even visited the Jewel City himself, for the distances between his native Tharkoon and the treetop city were considerable, and between the several realms of the Green Star World there is little commerce. But he was aware that Prince Janchan also hailed from Phaolon, and that Janchan, together with his new bride, Arjala, Karn the Hunter, and Zarqa the Kalood, had for some time past endeavored to find the lost girl in order to restore her to her kingdom.
Now, it seemed, the kingdom itself would be lost—in a somewhat different sense—before they managed to restore Niamh to her throne.
The bowman knew that his former comrades would be intensely concerned, could he only communicate his discoveries to them. This, of course, was doubly impossible, or, at least, unlikely. The one reason being his own immobilization, for slaves and prisoners by very definition have no freedom of movement. The other being that he did not know the whereabouts of his former friends.
Since they had entered the world-forest in the sky-ship of Ralidux, and since he had by accident been separated from Niamh the Fair, Zorak had lost all sense of direction. It is quite difficult to ascertain direction on the World of the Green Star under the best of circumstances, as I have elsewhere noted, but once within the forest of enormous trees—each of which looks interchangeable with the next—it is all but impossible. Ever since the ant army had made him a captive, and had forced him to accompany the horde on its crawling march, Zorak had become thoroughly disoriented.
The Tharkoonian bowman was a thoughtful, resourceful man, and not at all the sort to yield supinely to what seemed an inevitable fate. Although he was held a prisoner by the horde of warrior kraan, he never ceased to contemplate the possibilities for an escape to freedom. During the long days and nights while he labored at the metallurgical vats, Zorak discussed their situation with his fellow captives. Some of these had been enslaved for so long to the kraan that they had become dispirited, losing all hope of ever being free again. Others, however, yet nurtured in their hearts the burning desire for freedom.
“Yours is not the first voice that has been raised in hopes of escape,” a grim-faced Ardhanese informed Zorak. “In the many years I have been a prisoner of the kraan, more than a few have tried to make a break for freedom.”
“Have any yet succeeded?” Zorak asked.
The heavy-faced Ardhanese shook his head.
“Our situation is peculiarly helpless,” he observed in a somber tone. “We are not held captive in a city, but in the wilderness itself. We are surrounded by many thousands of alert and vigilant warrior kraan, who are continually on the move from one branch to another, or from one tree to another. At any given moment of night or day, literally hundreds of ant scouts range far afield in all directions, alert to give warning to the central body of the horde in case of the approach of enemies. It is not a matter of jailbreak, which is a comparatively simple matter, but of eluding hundreds of scouts who might be anywhere or everywhere about us.”
Zorak nodded thoughtfully, storing this opinion away in his mind to ponder upon later. He soon came to realize the peculiar difference between this sort of imprisonment, by a mobile force, and imprisonment in a stationary place. There was also the unique problem of being held captive by the warrior ants. For had he been enslaved by an enemy city, once free the bowman could have mingled with the inhabitants of the city and lost himself in their number, since they were human beings like himself, and racial or national origins are largely indistinguishable on this world. But a human held captive by the scarlet ant horde is uniquely vulnerable. He does not in any way resemble his captors, and each of the kraan knows at a glance that any human it may encounter is an enemy and a slave. Escape to freedom, then, became a very different kind of problem.