For a long time after Sitab was gone, Vokal remained seated on a low bench in the living room of his apartment. Worry was crowding in on his mind, the ambition that had led him into discrediting Garlud was proving itself a curse, and his love for Rhoa, wife of old Heglar, was now a burdensome thing that had cost him a thousand tals and might end up costing him his life.

Well, the die was cast now; there was no turning back. Dawn was no more than two or three hours away; long before Dyta's golden rays flooded Ammad's streets Sitab should have returned with word that Heglar and Garlud were dead. Everything depended on that now—it was still not too late to recoup, winning back his thousand tals and a higher place in Ammad's society.

The silver-haired nobleman rose from his chair and reached for the candle to blow out its flame. A few hour's sleep would make him better able to face the morrow....

... From her place on the narrow balcony of the nobleman's apartment, Dylara watched the candle flame perish under the man's exhalation. This time, she thought, I will not wait so long for him to fall asleep. She watched him cross the room and disappear from sight into the sleeping quarters beyond, waited for the space of a hundred heartbeats to be sure he would not come into this room again, then very slowly, her heart in her mouth, she began to move with extreme stealth across the floor toward the corridor door.

The journey seemed to take hours although two minutes were all that passed before she reached out to remove the heavy bar Vokal had dropped into place when his last guest was gone. With trembling fingers she set the thick length of wood against the stone flooring and slowly swung the door open a crack.

Light gleamed dully from down the corridor. With great care she widened the distance between the door's edge and its frame. When the space was large enough, she put her head out cautiously and looked along the corridor.

Standing there, watching her with wide eyes, was one of the palace guards!

Shock held both Dylara and the guard momentarily paralyzed—then Dylara, the first to recover, was into the corridor and running swiftly in the opposite direction.

Behind her she heard the guard shout a command. But before he could do more, she was around a bend in the corridor and racing toward the stairs she knew were further along....

... Vokal, not yet completely asleep, leaped from his bed at the sound of a sudden hoarse cry from outside his apartment. When he arrived at the open door—a door he had only moments before barred from inside—he found a knot of palace guards already assembled there.

"What has happened?" he demanded sharply.

The man regularly stationed outside his door explained in a few words.

Vokal's cheeks paled at the full implication of what had occurred came to him. Whoever this mystery woman was, she had overheard—must have overheard—his conversations with both Rhoa and Sitab. Were she a spy—someone who would go to Jaltor with what she had heard—Vokal was a dead man!

"Find her!" he screamed. "A hundred tals to the man who brings her alive, to me. Death to all of you unless she is found! Go!"

They went. They went as though the hounds of hell were at their heels. Within seconds every floor of the palace was alight with torches, every hall crowded with warriors, every room being searched. Guards at the palace gates were alerted, patrols were set to scouring the grounds between palace and outer wall.

There was no sign of the missing girl.

Tharn, sleeping soundly as a man does whose conscience is clear and whose bed is no more uncomfortable than a hundred others he has occupied, awakened suddenly. For a brief moment he lay without moving, his ears searching for some indication of what had awakened him.

There! The barest whisper of leather against stone from down the corridor that ran past his cell door. A sandaled foot had made that sound. Other ears—even the ears of a man already awake—would have missed what his sleeping brain had caught.

Soundlessly he left his stone bench and moved to the door. But the darkness was such that even his unbelievably sharp eyes were helpless to penetrate it. But if his eyes were useless, his ears were not. Fifty feet further down the corridor a man was standing; he could hear his breathing and the rustle of garments. A few seconds later Tharn's eyes caught a tiny glow of light—a glow that soon swelled to a flickering light strong enough for him to see the opposite row of barred cell doors.

Again came the whisper of sandaled feet. Presently an Ammadian guard came into view, a heavy spear in one hand, a small torch of flaming wood in the other. The guard was peering into each of the cells across from Tharn, pausing at length at some, passing others quickly. Tharn wondered at the man's attempt at stealth; since it was impossible for any of the prisoners to get at him, such precautions could serve no evident ends.

When the man reached a cell almost exactly across from Tharn, the cave man saw him toss something through the opening framing the bars. He heard the unseen prisoner sigh ... and then the guard raised his spear and inserted its head through the same opening.

Tharn was on the point of crying out a warning, his reason dictated only by a desire to thwart as far as possible the hated symbol of authority represented by this white-tunicked assassin. But in that moment he saw a second figure steal into the outer periphery of light thrown by the torch—a figure of a man whom Tharn recognized instantly as one of those who had accompanied Jotan on his search for Dylara a few days before.

As the arm holding the spear tensed to send it plunging into the unseen prisoner, the newcomer leaped cat-like upon the would-be assassin. There was a startled cry that echoed along the subterranean hall and the two men became a squirming knot of arms and legs.

And then abruptly the threshing figures were still as the second man pressed the blade of a flint knife against the other's thinly clad back.

"Not a move," growled Tamar, "or you are a dead man!"

Now a lovely dark-haired girl came into view, her face revealed by the flickering light of the still burning torch lying on the corridor's flooring. As she bent to pick up the bit of blazing wood Tharn recognized her as Urim's daughter, whose life he had saved on a long gone day.

"What were you up to there?" growled Tamar. "Who are you and what——"

"Tamar!"

The cry came from behind the barred door from which the young nobleman had just drawn the cringing Sitab. There, framed in the barred opening, was Jotan!

Alurna, a faint cry of happiness on her lips, rushed to the door and removed the heavy bar. Jotan bounded into the narrow hallway, gave Sephar's princess a thankful pat on the back, then turned to Tamar.

"What's going on here? Who is this guard? How did you find me?"

"First," Tamar said, "I'm going to find out why this son of Gubo was about to send a spear into you!"

At Jotan's blank expression, Tamar explained what had been about to happen when he and Alurna arrived. Whereupon Jotan took the trembling Sitab by the front of his tunic and shook him until most of his breath was gone.

"Who sent you?" Jotan snarled. "Speak before I strangle you with my bare hands!"

"I dare not tell you! He would kill me!" Sitab cried through chattering teeth.

Again Jotan shook him. "But I will cut you into tiny pieces if you do not tell. First I will cut your toes and fingers from your rotten body, then I will dig out your eyes and chop off your——"

Sitab had fainted.

Three ringing slaps brought the man back to consciousness. In a voice made shrill with terror he gave the name of the man who had sent him.

Tamar and Jotan stared at each other in utter amazement as the name of Vokal fell from those craven lips. Angrily Jotan hurled the shrinking figure from him, Sitab fell headlong against the stone wall and lapsed into a motionless heap of quivering flesh.

Tamar said, "That's all we need! We can go to Jaltor and tell him what this coward has said; then he will free you and your father and put Vokal in your place."

"My father lives?" cried Jotan. "I thought Jaltor had slain him."

Quickly Tamar explained what had actually happened. When he had finished, Jotan said, "Before we do anything else I must find my father. Help me search these cells, both of you."

"He may not be on this level," Tamar said. "We could spend hours hunting him. The thing to do would be to go to Jaltor——"

But Jotan was already on his way along the corridor, peering in at the occupant of each.

Minutes later there was a sizable group of men freed from the cells and grouped about Jotan and Tamar. Among them was Garlud, Jotan's father, his gaunt face wreathed in smiles, his strength, sapped by long days of imprisonment, flowing back at the realization he was free and in possession of the name of the man who had brought about his downfall. The others were those members of Jotan's party who had accompanied him from far-off Sephar, released from their brief imprisonment and ready for action.

Tamar said, "And now we can go to Jaltor and tell him what happened!"

"We shall have to take this man"—Jotan pointed to the fallen and unmoving body of Sitab—"to Jaltor as our only witness against Vokal."

Garlud said, "It is hard to believe that Vokal is the one behind all this trouble. We have been friends for many years, all of Ammad loves him, even Jaltor admires him more than almost any noble of the court."

"He is behind the plot against us, father," Jotan said sharply. "There can be no doubt about it."

"We shall need overwhelming proof."

"Our proof lies there." Jotan waved a hand at the motionless bulk near the wall. "Get him on his feet, somebody; it's time he told his story to Jaltor, king of Ammad!"

Tamar bent above the fallen man and shook him. "Come! You've rested long enough!"

But Sitab did not move and Tamar shook him again, harder this time, and repeated the order. Then suddenly the young noble was kneeling beside the still form of the guard and placing a hand against the tunic over his heart.

In the silence Tamar rose to his feet and met the stricken eyes of his friends. "He is dead," he said simply.

"There dies our proof," Garlud said glumly. "Now it is our word against Vokal's."

"No!" Jotan swung around to face his father and Tamar. "There is another way. We can go to Vokal's palace, pull him from his bed and force him to confess!"

"And what of Vokal's loyal guards and warriors?" Garlud said soberly. "Do you think they will idly stand aside and permit that?"

Jotan swept out his hand in a half circle. "Here are fifty men—stalwart warriors all. And in your own palace, father, are hundreds more. I say let us go to our own palace, gather together our warriors and march upon Vokal!"

"You forget," Garlud said softly, "that I am regarded as an enemy of the State. As such, my palace and possessions are confiscated and my warriors stripped of their weapons and confined to quarters."

"Jotan," said a quiet voice from behind them.

The group of men standing about the subterranean corridor beneath the palace of Jaltor of Ammad, turned as the quiet voice reached their ears.

Standing at the barred opening of one of the locked cells, the strong handsome face, visible in the light of the late Sitab's torch, was Tharn, a slight smile on his lips.

"Who calls my name?" demanded the young noble, stepping nearer the door of the cell.

"It is I—Tharn, son of Tharn, the cave man. Have you forgotten the times we have met in the past?"

Recognition dawned in Jotan's expression. "Of course! You are the man who claimed Dylara belonged to you."

"And she still belongs to me," Tharn said quietly.

"She lives?" Even the absence of more than dim light could not hide the sudden hope flaring in the young nobleman's eyes.

Tharn nodded. "Even now she is held prisoner by the man who has plotted against you."

Jotan stiffened. "You mean Vokal? How do you know this?"

Tharn, with a few terse words, explained what had taken place at Vokal's palace only a few short hours before. When he finished, Jotan was ready to start out for that nobleman's palace, alone if necessary, to rescue her. But others of the group remonstrated, pointing out the rashness of such a move. As they stood there arguing the point, Tharn's clear voice brought them into silence once more.

"There are too few of you to march against Vokal," he pointed out. "But all around you are men who are no better than dead as long as they remain behind bars. Free them, arm them with the weapons of the guards attached to this wing of Jaltor's palace, and they will march with you to overcome your enemy."

The idea caught instant hold. Moments later the group of fifty had swollen to three times that number as cell after cell of the lower three levels of Jaltor's pits were emptied.

There were some of the prisoners who held back, preferring to remain behind bars rather than become involved in a war between noblemen; while others had spent too long below ground to be little more than empty shells of men.

It was on the fourth level that they found several rooms furnished as quarters for the guards stationed in this wing of the palace. An ante-room contained a large supply of spears, bows and arrows and knives, but guards were on duty at that point, while a dozen others slept in the adjoining room.

After a brief council of war, it was decided that Tharn and Trakor would attempt to creep up on the two guards on duty just within the entrance to the arms-room and overpower them without permitting an alarm to be given. Should they succeed in doing this, it would be a simple matter to bar the only exit to the sleeping quarters, thus effectively keeping Jotan's men from being surprised from the rear by Jaltor's warriors.

While the embryo army waited on the level below, Tharn and young Trakor crept up the next ramp and moved stealthily toward their goal. Almost at once Trakor returned, a broad grin creasing his face, and beckoned the others to join him.

They found both guards bound and gagged, the door into the guard's quarters closed and barred, and weapons enough for an army at their disposal. With muffled cries of joy the men swept up bows, arrows, spears and knives; and what a few minutes before had been an unarmed mob was now a small compact army of disciplined men, ready to win amnesty and a nobleman's favor by helping to expose a traitor.

So great was the excitement, so strong the exultation of them all, that none noticed one of the recently freed prisoners detach himself from the group and steal back into the corridor. An instant later this man was fleeing rapidly up the final ramp, on his way to freedom.

For more than an hour now the palace and grounds of Vokal, nobleman of Ammad, had been the scene of great activity. Every guard, every servant, scoured the four floors and palace grounds, inch by inch, in search for the girl who had fled Vokal's room.

While seemingly everywhere at once, the silver-haired nobleman spurred them on, his calmness gone, his eyes wild, fear riding him hard. He alone of them all knew what it would mean for him were this girl to escape and find her way to Jaltor with the knowledge she had gained while lurking on the balcony outside his private suite.

He was standing now in a room on the first floor, giving directions to Ekbar, captain of his guards, when one of the warriors pushed through the crowded room, a stranger at his heels.

"Your pardon, Most-High," said the guard, "but this man came to our gates a moment ago and demanded to see you. He says he has important information that is for your ears alone."

Vokal, turning to order the man aside, stopped and stared. The stranger was tall and little more than a skeleton. His hair hung in long strands to his shoulders and a heavy beard covered his face. Among a race of men who permitted no hair to mask their countenances, the beard alone made him worthy of attention.

"Who are you," Vokal snapped, "and what do you want of me?"

"I am Tarsal," croaked the stranger, "once guard in your service. Many moons ago I fought with one of Jaltor's guards and slew him. Since that day I have been confined in the pits of Ammad's king."

Ekbar, who had been staring at the man closely while he was speaking, nodded. "He tells the truth, Most-High. I recognize him now."

"What do you want of me?" Vokal said again, his voice shrill with impatience.

"I came to warn you," Tarsal said. "Garlud and Jotan, his son, have escaped from their cells and have gathered together a small army taken from Jaltor's pits. They say that it was because of you that Garlud and Jotan were imprisoned by Jaltor, and they are coming to capture you and take you before the king."

The nobleman's skin turned a dirty white. This was ruin for him! Wildly he sought to think of some way by which he could escape Jaltor's wrath, once the truth came out.

"What are the plans of this mob?" he demanded. "Do they expect to win Jaltor's support in the fight against me?"

"Not that I know of, Most-High. They spoke of stealing from the palace and marching here to take you captive and bring you before Ammad's king that he may hear the truth from your own lips."

Vokal's brain was working with cold precision. There was a way out, then! Were he and his warriors able to ambush this gang of prison rats, able to wipe them out to the last man, there would be none left alive to tell Jaltor what they had hoped to accomplish.

All thoughts of the mysterious young woman who had raced from his apartment earlier that night were forgotten as he whirled about to confront the open-mouthed Ekbar.

"There is still time," he cried, "to save ourselves. Listen to me closely, Ekbar, and do exactly as I say!"

As the heavily armed force of perhaps one hundred and fifty men entered one of Ammad's broad avenues no more than two blocks from Vokal's palace, Jotan called it to a halt while the leaders conferred.

Five men comprised the leadership of the relatively small army. They were Jotan and his father, Tamar, Tharn and young Trakor. Almost from the first it was Tharn to whom the others turned for guidance, despite the fact that he was a complete stranger to Ammad.

"How many men," Tharn asked, "are likely to be defending Vokal's palace?"

"No less than five hundred," Jotan said grimly. "We shall be badly outnumbered my friend."

"We have something on our side worth hundreds of warriors," Tharn observed. "Surprise is our biggest and best ally. If we can win our way into Vokal's palace and reach the quarters of Vokal himself before his guards are sufficiently alerted to interfere, the fight will be over before it begins."

"And how do you propose this shall be done?"

Tharn rubbed his chin while his quick mind reviewed the situation. "I think," he said finally, "That it would be better if Trakor and I went ahead and removed the guards outside the wall gates. Then our entire force can enter the grounds themselves and hide in the shrubbery there until a door at the rear of the palace can be unbarred. It might serve us best if Trakor and I go directly to Vokal's room and take him captive before we give the signal for the rest of you to enter."

Garlud was shaking his head. "No. That is risking too much. If the two of you were captured, the entire palace would be alerted before the rest of us could put a foot inside it. Then indeed would we be helpless; Vokal's men could cut us down from the safety of the palace walls."

The five stood there in the silent sleeping street, stone walls rising steep and bleak on either side, the entire army behind them hidden from chance view by the almost total lack of light. There was less than two hours remaining before dawn and they must act quickly or lose their chief aid: the darkness of the now moonless night.

It was finally decided that Tharn and Trakor, as a tribute to their superior experience in tracking down the most wary of prey, were the ones to remove the guards outside at least two of the gates in Vokal's wall of stone.

And so it was that the two Cro-Magnards stole away into the darkness, armed with arrows and bow and two good flint knives.

Half an hour later both were back, reporting success to the other leaders. "It was almost too easy," Tharn said thoughtfully. "Where there were four guards at one of the gates earlier tonight, I found but one—and he was sitting with his back to the gate and fast asleep. After I slew him I went on to help Trakor, only to learn he had had an almost similar experience."

"It is not uncommon for guards to sleep at their posts," Jotan said impatiently. "Let us get started before other of Vokal's guards discover the gates are unguarded and rouse the palace defenders."

"I think we should make sure we are not going blindly into some trap," Tharn demurred. "This entire thing is suspicious ... too easy."

But Jotan waved the cave lord into silence. "Can't you understand," he said crisply, "that we don't have time for that? I say let's get on with our plan and not spend time worrying about things that will never happen."

In this both Garlud and Tamar agreed, and so Tharn shrugged and said no more. He was in league with these Ammadians for only one reason: to make it that much easier for him to snatch Dylara from this strange city and return with her to the caves of his own people. What had happened to her, once he and Trakor had fled Vokal's palace earlier that night, leaving her hidden within the building, was something he could not know. But there was no other place in all of Ammad he knew where to look for her, and so he must act in the belief that she still was behind the palace walls, either hidden there or once more a captive of the rascally nobleman.

Less than half an hour later all of Jotan's band of warriors squatted behind the belt of foliage just within the walls of Vokal's sprawling palace. In the dim light of stars they could look out between the interstices of growing things, seeing the many windowed bulk of stone rising four full floors above the neighboring terrain. No where in all that vast expanse was there a sign of life. No candle showed its brief flame at any window. Silent and dark and somehow a place of brooding danger.

After another whispered conference, Tharn left the other leaders of the band and flitted across the open ground, moving like a black shadow toward the same doorway through which Trakor had raced to join him only an hour or two earlier.

Those watching him from the shadowy foliage lost sight of him almost at once; and when, a few moments later, he seemed to rise from the ground almost under their noses, a startled gasp from a dozen throats made a rustling sound against the heavy silence.

"The door is still unbarred," Tharn reported, frowning. "I am even surer now, noble Jotan, that we are heading straight for a trap set up by the wily Vokal."

"He could not know our plans," Jotan said impatiently. "It means simply that they forgot to bar the door after the excitement you and your friend caused them earlier. Things are working out well for us."

Tharn smiled his enigmatic smile and said no more. Quickly the five leaders moved among their eager troops, issuing orders down the line. And then, at a single word from Jotan the band of one hundred and fifty armed men stepped into the open and started for the palace walls.

Suddenly the shrill cry of a woman rose against the weighted silence. "Back!" the voice screamed from high above them. "Go back! It is a trap!"

"Dylara!" Tharn shouted, and with great bounding strides he raced toward the palace. Startled by the shrill shout, puzzled by Tharn's dash into the jaws of what might be a trap, the hundred and fifty wavered uncertainly, then charged after the racing cave man.

And as the first wave of Jotan's warriors reached the halfway mark in the clearing, a hundred flaming branches were hurled from the open windows into the courtyard beneath, their flames lighting up the entire ribbon of open ground and disclosing the pitifully small army to the waiting warriors of Vokal.

A rain of arrows, spears and clubs now rained down from those windows upon the men beneath. Men reeled and fell, some instantly dead, others badly wounded. Some of those unhit stopped in their tracks, looked wildly around, then turned to flee for the safety of the street behind them.

And it was then that Vokal's masterful plan was fully unveiled. From those same openings through the stone wall encircling Vokal's estate, came other of that nobleman's warriors, stationed in places of concealment outside, their purpose to close off the last avenue of escape for Jotan's troops.

In all this confusion, with death threatening from all sides, Trakor had eyes only for his friend and companion—Tharn, lord of the caves.

At first he did not comprehend what lay behind the cave man's mad dash toward the palace. But when he saw Tharn leap lightly up to catch the sill of one window, then swarm rapidly up toward the second story, he understood fully what lay in the giant warrior's mind.

One of Vokal's warriors leaned from a window directly in Tharn's path and raised his spear with the obvious intention of burying its head in the cave man's defenseless body as it hung a full fifteen feet above the ground. Trakor, seeing this, fitted an arrow to his bow with unthinkable quickness and sent the flint tipped missile across space and full into the enemy warrior's exposed chest.

The heavy spear rolled from an already dead hand and the man fell loosely across the wide sill as Tharn worked his way upward past the limp body.

Three more attempts were made by those within to bring down the climbing cave man. On each occasion Trakor, standing like a rock amid a shower of deadly weapons that struck every where about him, brought down the would-be killer.

Tharn was only a few feet from the roof's edge now, his naked feet and long-fingered hands finding foot—and hand-holds where Trakor would have sworn none existed.

Trakor, watching, groaned with sudden fear. Barely visible in the flickering light of torches below, a figure appeared at the roof's edge directly above Tharn's rising form. In the figure's hands was a heavy spear and the arm holding it swept aloft preparatory to skewering Tharn on its point.

Even as Trakor witnessed this, an arrow from his bow was flashing up toward that menacing warrior. But the combination of bad light, distance and the necessity for haste was too great a handicap for success, and the arrow whizzed wide of its mark.

Again Trakor groaned. There was no time for a second shot. Tharn was doomed to die.

And in that second a slender figure appeared at the roof's edge beside the would-be assassin and threw itself headlong against him. The man staggered back under the impact, his spear falling from his hand, then turned and closed with the newcomer.

As the two of them teetered there on the thin strip of stone forming the roof's edge, Tharn's strong hands closed about that same edge and he rose to his feet. He saw who it was that had saved his life: Dylara, daughter of Majok.

Even as he raced forward to save the girl he loved from being thrown into the void below, Tharn knew he was too late. Voicing a scream of fear, Dylara reeled back and toppled into space!

As her feet left the roof, Tharn threw himself headlong in a direction parallel with the edge, one arm out-thrust, the other bent to check his fall. For one agonizing second the reaching hand encountered only air; then his fingers brushed against cloth, closed like a snapped trap, and as his muscular frame crashed against the roof's edge, a sudden jerk against his outstretched arm told him he had checked Dylara's fall.

A heavy sandal thudded home against his ribs, nearly rolling him into the void and to death on the packed earth below. Before the swinging foot could strike home a second time, Tharn was on his feet and Dylara was swung back to safety of the roof.

As Tharn released the girl, the screaming, clawing figure of his enemy closed upon him. In the faint light, Tharn saw the other's hair was a silvery white and beneath it was a face once gentle but now transformed into the mask of a madman.

A grim smile touched Tharn's lips as one of his brawny arms snaked out and caught the raving beast that had once been Vokal, third most powerful and influential figure in all Ammad. With almost casual ease Tharn swung the human form high above his head, then tossed him, a screaming missile of terror, to the ground below.

A long eerie wailing cry ended suddenly and the thud of flesh against earth seemed to jar into silence the tumult filling the grounds of the late Vokal's palace. In the light of the still burning torches Vokal's lifeless body was clearly visible to the palace defenders.

In that hushed moment, Jotan took advantage of the miracle that had saved the remnants of his fighting force.

"Vokal is dead!" he shouted. "Vokal the traitor is no more! Lay down your arms, warriors of the dead Vokal! Lay down your arms that you may win forgiveness from Jaltor, king of Ammad!"

A wavering moment of indecision followed as the warriors at the palace windows stood with raised weapons hesitating to decide one way or the other. And in that moment a brawny figure appeared at one of the open windows.

"Death to the invader!" shouted Ekbar, captain of the late Vokal's guards. "Avenge the noble Vokal! Kill them all!"

As the last words left his lips a second man appeared beside the captain. Before the latter could realize what was taking place a stone knife flashed in a savage arc, burying its length in his heart.

Ekbar voiced a single scream of anguish and toppled across the sill and to the ground beneath, dead beside the master he had so faithfully served.

While from that same window a young warrior of that same dead master smiled with grim satisfaction. Otar had made sure his bride, the lovely Marua, would never again be visited by her former suitor.

With Ekbar died the last of all resistance against Jotan's invading warriors. Scores of weapons fell uselessly to the ground and the palace defenders began to stream from the building, their hands lifted in surrender.

And it was then that a quiet voice from behind Jotan and his father said:

"Are the pits of Jaltor so shallow that they may not hold my enemies?"

The nobleman and his son wheeled about, then stiffened to rigid attention at sight of Jaltor, king of Ammad, standing at the forefront of a squad of his own guards.