Part 35 (2/2)

A glance at those muscles, even though apparently relaxed in sleep, was enough to give him his decision. Lifting his spear, he thrust its point between the bars of the door, aimed it squarely at Jotan's exposed chest--and tensed his muscles to launch the heavy weapon.

CHAPTER XIV

AMBUSH

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 n.o.bleman 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 n.o.bleman'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 s.p.a.ce 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 pa.s.sed 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 s.p.a.ce 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 hoa.r.s.e 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 a.s.sembled 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 h.e.l.l 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.

<script>