Under the Green Star

The princess did not seem to find my story very amusing, although she smiled wanly. But her brow soon clouded with worry.

“Should you not tell someone—Yurgon, perhaps? If this goes unreported, will not this Sligon make another attempt on your life?” she asked. I shook my head.

“I do not think so,” I said. “I rather imagine little Sligon received punishment enough in his fall. I doubt if he will try the same trick twice in a row; and, anyway, there is little he can do against us. Of course, I shall remain on my guard. The only thing we must be careful about is to see to it that he does not come skulking around spying upon us, for were he to discover that I am the Lord Chong and that you are the Princess Niamh of Phaolon, then he would have an excellent weapon to use against us—”

I broke off suddenly, for just as I had uttered those fateful words a hiss of indrawn breath came to my ears.

Had someone been lurking outside our cubicle, listening to our words?

In a flash I drew the curtains aside and sprang out into the hall. But there was no one there; no one at all.

But just vanishing through a doorway I glimpsed a black shape. Was it only my imagination, or did that dark figure have a hunched back and did it walk with the sidling motion of a crab?

The skin prickled at the nape of my neck, under my unshorn warrior’s mane. Had the black figure limped painfully on a twisted leg? Had it been Sligon, there, beyond the curtains while we talked? And had the spiteful little thief overheard when I had been so careless as to utter Niamh’s name aloud?

I stood there helplessly, clenching and unclenching my fists in an agony of indecision, uncertain whether or not I should plunge after that figure, now vanished. Just then my friend Kaorn strode past, yawning sleepily. I grabbed the boy’s arm.

“Lad, where is Sligon? Have you seen aught of him?” I demanded urgently.

“Not I,” the youth said in a puzzled tone. “He’s asleep, I guess—as both you and I should be. Why do you ask?”

“Oh—nothing,” I said shortly. Then, clapping him on the shoulder, I returned to my bed.

But I did not sleep. Long after Niamh left to go about her kitchen duties, I tossed and turned restlessly, wondering if it had been Sligon listening beyond the curtain; and, if it had been him, had he heard when I spoke Niamh’s name?

Eventually, exhaustion took dominance over my worries, and I slept. But my dreams were dark and troubled ones, nightmares through which a hunched shape shambled monstrously, its leering eyes aflame with a dreadful secret.

Events came to a head that very evening. But first came a surprising event that none of us could have foretold.

While night guards spent their tour perched in tiny crow’s nests aloft in the giant trees, Siona’s daytime guards combed the vicinity by air, mounted on the beautiful, gigantic dragonflies the Laonese call zaiph. Toward late afternoon, one of these far-flung scouts returned with an astonishing message.

During his flight he had observed a party in the black-and-yellow livery of the city of Ardha traveling under a flag of truce. These envoys of Akhmim bore a message from the tyrant-lord of that realm to none other but Siona herself! What this message was, they refused to divulge to any but the girl-leader of the outlaw band, and for this purpose they desired safe-conduct into the very lair of the foresters.

“Admit ambassadors of an enemy kingdom to visit us here in the Secret City?” Siona repeated in tones of amazement and disbelief. “They must be mad to think we would permit them to learn the key of our hiding place!”

“On the other hand,” said Yurgon thoughtfully, “it would do no harm to find out what it is they desire of us. They could be carefully blindfolded and flown here by a roundabout route, thus remaining in ignorance of the location of our encampment …”

Siona thought it over, rubbing her small, stubborn chin with thoughtful, musing fingers.

“Well, there is something in what you say. Doubtless there is profit in it, whatever it is the folk of Ardha require of us … and it has been too long since you lazy rogues have surprised a merchant caravan out of their gems and plump purses! Yurgon, see to it. I leave the protective measures to your devise … we will meet with these envoys here tonight in the great hall.”

Listening at my side, Niamh shivered suddenly, and dug her fingers into the flesh of my arm.

Looking back on the scene from the vantage point of time, I wonder if she had some premonition of the dreadful doom that was about to befall both of us.

Night fell, black as pitch; and it was not until an hour after darkness came down on the World of the Green Star that the envoys of Akhmim of Ardha were conducted into the secret Secret City, as the forest outlaws termed their hidden base.

Yurgon had decided to wait until darkness for added security, for he did not trust the unscrupulous wiles of the Ardhanese envoy. The outlaws were considered the foes of every city, and it was not impossible for a blindfold to slip. But by conducting the party of ambassadors here under cover of night, Yurgon made it doubly certain that the position of the outlaw camp would remain unknown to their yellow-robed enemies.