Part 37 (1/2)
The cave-girl was trying hard to analyze the tangled e related to the sensation she had knohen he had taken her in his arht of him make her heart leap with that peculiar breathless swoop? No one else she had ever known could effect it so How handso there on the white sands, sweeping the croith a contelance at the handsome profile of Jotan as he listened politely to Alurna's story How fortunate she was to have won the love of this ht in the htful, an honorable position in his world--what more could any man offer?
Yet only Tharn, untamed man of the caves, could ht never be able to do
Last night a priest had coreat room where she had been taken upon her return to Sephar He had brought her to Jotan's quarters, and she had spent the night there, sharing a room with the princess Alurna, who had welcoirls had little to say to each other Alurna had regarded the slave-girl with un; while Dylara, after the first cold rebuff of her attempt to be friendly, had withdrawn into a shell of silence
On the followingan attitude of ware was the secret decision of the princess to underirl
Just as the second event was about to get under way, Jotan got up, excused himself and made his way to the section of the stands reserved for Pryak and the Council of Priests There he took a seat beside the high priest
Pryak glanced at hi lift of his eyebrows
”O Voice of the God,” said Jotan, ” of the Games We are anxious to start on our journey, and ask your permission to depart without further loss of time”
Sephar's enthusiastic reception of the Gah hu his hands on the other's shoulders ”I ask of the God a safe and uneventful journey for you and your s and avowals of lasting friendshi+p Explain to hihters in his care He will approve, I am sure”
”All you have asked shall be done,” pro of Sephar and Voice of the God, I bid you farewell”
Turning, Jotan hurried along the stone aisle to his own lodge and waiting friends Once there, he raised hiht and waved both arroup of some forty or fifty warriors rose in a body and started toward the nearest exit
”Co to the balance of those in his party ”We start at once for A one last look toward the closed doorway through which Tharn had passed not long before He had been her last tie with the old life Now she was about to leave all that behind, to go into a neorld at the side of a reatly admired Why was her heart so heavy? Was it because she would never again see the caves of her people--the face of her father? Or was it because Tharn was lost to her, forever? Even should he coone--separated from him by the vast distance between Sephar and the country Jotan called ho stretches of untracked jungles and waterless plains between Sephar and Ammad Froe beasts and wild tribes of men that haunted the mountain trails and forest-cloaked ravines to the south And beyond the rasslands that reached to stillthe boundary to A allocated to the visitors swar a wide assortment of articles to be bound into individual packs for easy handling
Jotan took active charge Quickly the line ofcompact bundles to their backs; well-arlypoles, arrived for use of the two fe the example set by Alurna, seated herself in the exact center of the sheet of skins as it lay in the street Two brawny attendants stepped forward, bent, one at either end of the wooden poles, and in perfect unison swung the rods to their shoulders
From his position at the colu to the two girls Satisfied that all were in place, he shouted a coot under way
Across the city they reat walls, and on across the cleared space beyond Before thee of the forbidding jungle; and here, leading directly southward through a tangled s of a well-beaten trail, the first of e must follow before far-off Ammad could be reached
Just before the marchers entered the forest, Dylara turned to look back at Sephar's walls, gri rays