Renegade of Callisto

His eyes were every bit as unusual. They were of a pale, jewel-bright shade resembling lavender, that is the pupils were. But his eyes seemed to be almost entirely composed of pupil, and the whites were seldom visible.

Like great sparkling sapphires were the peculiar eyes of Zothon of the Sea-Folk. And Valkar soon became very curious about this strange personage.

As for his appearance, he was an odd, not unattractive, combination of lithe and sinewy strength together with a certain compactness of proportion so flawlessly symmetrical that you did not think of him as being smaller than the average human being, unless and until you saw him standing next to an ordinary man of Shondakor or Tharkol.

For one so slight, his physical strength, toughness, and endurance were genuinely remarkable. Set to toiling with the other slaves of the Zajjadars, he put them all to shame by his extraordinary strength.

Valkar was intrigued by the mystery of his unknown origin and homeland, but it was quite some time before, as chance would have it, he was chained to a work detail next to the strange black man with the startling white hair.

As soon as the first opportunity for them to converse together without being observed presented itself, Valkar, as it were, seized it by the forelock.

“Jaruga, notar,” he said in low tones.

“Jaruga, Valkar-jan,” replied the other quietly. “For I trust that to be your name; at any rate, thus I have heard the young boy address you. I am Zothon the Arzomian, a Zetetikar of the Sea-Folk.”

And here was another puzzle for Valkar to think about! For the word zetetikar means, simply, “seeker” or “searcher.” However, Zothon used the word in such a way as to suggest that, among the people of his nation, it was a title or rank or, perhaps, a profession.

“What do you seek, for what do you search, O Zothon?” the Prince inquired.

“For many things, my Prince,” replied the other. Then, with a slight smile, he remarked: “At the moment, for my freedom.”

Then, as luck would have it, they were separated and assigned to different tasks, and Valkar did not for some time find another opportunity to exchange words with the mysterious black man with the white hair.

The Zajjadar moved south in rapid, day-long increments, pausing only at nightfall to erect their tents, eat the evening meal, and rest. Although Valkar remained alert and vigilant for the slightest chance to escape, none presented itself.

Nor did he again have the chance to speak to Zothon. None of the other captives to whom he spoke concerning the black man knew anything about him or his unknown homeland. But it was the boy Taran who noticed something even more peculiar and unique regarding Zothon of Arzoma.

And that was that he had gills!

Now, as it happens, no true amphibians are known to exist upon the jungle Moon, although some of the aquatic denizens, like the monstrous groacks that infest the waters of the Far Side of the planet, are able to leave the depths for a brief time, in order to attack their prey ashore.

But certainly no sea-dwelling race of intelligent humanoids was known or even rumored to exist. Nor did the legends and sagas with which Valkar was acquainted make any reference to a race of merfolk. So this bit of chance discovery made Valkar even more mystified than before. .

But Taran was positive about his discovery. He did not, of course, call them gills, but announced that once, when he had toiled beside the black man at unloading folded tents from one of the wains, the Arzomian had gone stripped to the waist, and upon both sides of his torso, situated parallel to his ribs, Taran had clearly seen long, thin, pink-lipped openings in his flesh.

They were not scars, of this the boy was certain; and neither were they open, unhealed wounds. Indeed, as the chest of Zothon rose and fell, straining from his exertions, the long gill-slits had expanded and contracted, rhythmically.

They could be nothing else but gills, and therefore the true meaning of the name of his people, the Laj-Thad, was to be defined literally. They were―must be―dwellers beneath the sea.

This, of course, presented the Prince with yet another mystery to be solved. For only two bodies of water large enough to be called seas are known to exist upon the surface of Callisto, the Corund Laj at the north eastern border of the inhabited hemisphere of the planet, and the Sanmur Laj at the southwestern border.

The greater sea of Corund Laj is ruled by the Perushtarians, whose cities are situated along its shores, with their capital, Grand Perushtar itself, upon a large island near the southern shores. And the trading and intercourse between the Perushtarian cities and the Golden City of the Ku Thad were such that, surely, if the depths of the sea had been inhabited by an intelligent aquatic race, everyone would know about it.

That left only the Sanmur Laj in the distant south as a good possible site for Zothon’s city of Arzoma. The Lesser Sea was at a great distance from Shondakor and Tharkol and Ganatol, and was considered unexplored. No one had ever gone there, insofar as Prince Valkar was aware, for the plain and simple reason that there was nothing there that anyone would wish to visit. The sea was, as far as anyone knew, uninhabited and islandless, situated in the midst of a remote and hostile and uninhabited wilderness that bordered upon the far western terminus of the Plains of Haratha.