Chapter 18
THE PLEASURE GARDENS

At the very instant that Saphrar had called out there was a great blast of steam and fumes that seemed to explode from the fluid about me as though the monster in which I found myself had now, its prey satisfactorily entrapped, dared to respire and, at the same time, I felt the yellow fluid about my body begin to thicken and yell. I cried out suddenly in alarm horrified at my predicament and struggled to turn back and wade to the edge of the marbled-basin that was the cage of the thing in which I was, but the fluid, tightening about me, DOW seemed to have the consistency of a rich yellow, hot mud and then, by the time I had reached a level where it rose to a point midway between my knees and waist the fluid had become as resistant as wet, yellow cement and I could move no further. My legs began to tingle and sting, and I could feel the skin beginning to be etched and picked by the corrosive elements now attacking them.

I heard Saphrar remark, "It sometimes takes hours to be fully digested."

Wildly, with the useless quiva, I began to slash and pick at the damp, thick stud about me. The blade would sink in fully, as though in a tub of wet cement, leaving a mark, but when it was withdrawn the mark would be erased by the material flowing in to fill the aperture

"Some men," said Saphrar, "those who do not struggle have lived for as much as three hours long enough in some cases to see,"

I saw one of the vines hanging near me. My heart leaped wildly at this chance. If I could but reach it! With all my strength I moved towards it an inch and then another inch my fingers stretched, my arms and back aching, until in another inch I might have grasped it and then, to my horror, as I reached in agony for the vine, it rustled and lifted itself just beyond my reach. I moved toward it again, and again it did this. I howled with rage. I was going to try again when I saw the slave I had noticed earlier watching me, his hands on certain of the levers in the panel on the curving wall. I stood in the coagulating, tightening fluid, held fast a prisoner, and threw back my head in despair. He had, of course, controlled the movement of the vine from the panel, undoubtedly by wires.

"Yes, Tarl Cabot," wheezed Saphrar, giggling, "and yet you will, in an hour or so, when you are mad with pain and fear, try yet again and again to touch and grasp a vine, knowing that you will not succeed but yet again and again trying, believing that once somehow you will be successful."

"But you will not!" Saphrar now giggled uncontrollably. "I have even seen them reach for vines a spear’s length above their head and think they could reach them!" Saphrar’s two golden teeth, like yellow fangs, showed as he put back his head and howled with pleasure, his fat little hands pounding on the wood of the shield.

The quiva had turned itself in my hand and my arm flew back, that I might take with me in my death the tormentor, Saphrar of Turia.

"Beware!" cried the Paravaci and Saphrar suddenly stopped laughing and observed me warily.

If my arm should fly forward he would have time to leap below the wooden frame.

Now he was putting his chin on the wooden shield and watching me again, once more giggling.

"Many have used the quiva before now," he said, "but usually to plunge it into their own heart."

I looked at the blade.

"Tarl Cabot," I said, "does not slay himself."

"I did not think so," said Saphrar. "And that is why you were permitted to keep the quiva." Then he threw back his head and laughed again.

"You fat, filthy urt!" cried Harold, struggling in his bonds with the two men-at-arms who held him.

"Be patient," giggled Saphrar. "Be patient, my impetuous young friend. Your turn will come!"

I stood as still as I could. My feet and legs felt cold and yet as if they were burning presumably the acids of the pool were at work. As nearly as I could determine the pool was thick, rubbery, gelatinous, only in the area near to my body. I could see it rippling, and splashing a bit against the edge of the marbled basin. Indeed, it was even lower toward the edge now, and had humped itself in my vicinity, as though in time it might climb my body and, in some hours perhaps, engulf me. But doubtless by then I would have been half digested, much of me little more than a cream of fluids and proteins then mixing with and nourishing the substance of my devourer the Yellow Pool of Turia.

I pushed now, with all my might, not toward the edge of the marbled basin, but rather toward the deepest part of the pool. To my satisfaction I found that I could move, though barely, in this direction. The pool was content that I should enter it more deeply, perhaps it even desired that I do so, that its meal might be even more readily obtained.

"What is he doing?" cried the Paravaci.

"He is mad," said Saphrar.

Half inch I moved toward the centre of the pool my journey became easier. Then suddenly, the yellow, encircling cement like substance had oozed from my limbs and I could take two or three free steps. The fluid was now, however, to my armpits. One of the luminescent, white spheres floated by, quite close to me. To my horror I saw it change its shade as it neared the surface, more closely approaching the light.

As it had risen toward the surface, just beneath which it now rested, its pigmentation had changed from a luminescent white to a rather darkish grey. It was clearly photosensitive. I reached out and slashed at it with the quiva, cutting it, and it withdrew suddenly, rolling in the fluid, and the pool itself seemed suddenly to churn with steam and light. Then it was quiet again. Yet somehow I knew now the pool, like all forms of life, had some level of irritability. More of the luminescent, white orbs now floated about me, circling me, but none of them now approached closely enough to allow me to use the quiva.

I splashed across the centre of the pool, literally swimming. As soon as I had crossed the centre I felt the fluids of the pool once again begin to yell and tighten. By the time I had reached the level of my waist on the opposite side I could, once again, no longer move toward the edge of the pool. I tried this twice more, in different directions, with identically the same result. Always, the luminescent, photosensitive orbs seemed to float behind me and around me in the fluid. Then I was swimming freely in the yellow fluid at the centre of the pool. Beneath me, vaguely, several feet under the surface, I could see a collection, almost like threads and granules in a transparent bag, of intertwined, writhing filaments and spheres, imbedded in a darkish yellow jelly, walled in by a translucent membrane.

Quiva in my teeth I dove toward the deepest part of the Yellow Pool of Turin, where glowed the quickness and substance of the living thing in which I swam.

Almost instantly as I submerged the fluid beneath me began to jell, walling me away from the glowing mass at the bottom of the pool but, hand over hand, pulling at it and thrusting my way, I forced my way deeper and deeper into it.

Finally I was literally digging in it feet below the surface. My lungs began to scream for air. Still I dug in the yellow fluid, hands and fingernails bleeding, and then, when it seemed my lungs would burst and darkness was engulfing me and I would lose consciousness, I felt a globular, membranous tissue, wet and slimy, recoil spasmodically from my touch.

Upside down, locked in the gelling fluid, I took the quiva from my mouth and, with both hands, pressed down with the blade against that twitching, jerking, withdrawing membrane.

It seemed that the living, amorphous globe of matter which I struck began to move away, slithering away in the yellow fluids, but I pursued it, one hand in the torn membrane and continued to slash and tear at it. Crowded about my body now were entangling filaments and spheres trying, like hands and teeth, to tear me from my work, but I struck and tore again and again and then entered the secret world beneath the membrane slashing to the left and right and suddenly the fluid began to loosen and withdraw above me and within the membranous chamber it began to solidify against me and push me out, I stayed as long as I could but, lungs wrenching, at last permitted myself to be thrust from the membranous chamber and hurled into the loose fluid above. Now below me the fluid began to yell swiftly almost like a rising floor and it loosened and withdrew on all sides and suddenly my head broke the surface and I breathed. I now stood on the hardened surface of the Yellow Pool of Turia and saw the fluids of the sides seeping into the mass beneath me and hardening almost instantly. I stood now on a warm, dry globular mass, almost like a huge, living shell. I could not have scratched the surface with the quiva.

"Kill him!" I heard Saphrar cry, and there was suddenly the hiss of a crossbow quarrel which streaked past me and shattered on the curving wall behind me. Standing now on the high, humped dried thing, lofty on that protective coating I leaped easily up and seized one of the low hanging vines and climbed rapidly toward the blue ceiling of the chamber; I heard another hiss and saw a bolt from the crossbow shatter through the crystalline blue substance. One of the crossbowmen had leaped to the now dry floor of the manic basin and stood almost beneath me, his crossbow raised. I knew I would not be able to elude his quarrel. Then suddenly I heard his agonized cry and saw that beneath me, once again, there glistened the yellow fluids of- the pool, moving about him, for the thing perhaps thermotropic had again, as rapidly as it had hardened, liquefied and swirled about him, the luminescent spheres and filaments visible beneath its surface. The crossbow bolt went wild, again shattering the blue surface of the dome. I heard the wild, eerie cry of the luckless man beneath me and then, with my fist, broke the blue surface and climbed through, grasping the iron of a reticulated framework supporting numerous energy bulbs.

Far off, it seemed, I could hear Saphrar screeching for more guards.

I ran over the iron framework until, judging by the distance and curve of the dome, I had reached a point above where Harold and I had waited at the edge of the pool.

There, quiva in hand, uttering the war cry of Ko-ro-ba, feet first, I leaped from the framework and shattered through the blue surface landing among my startled enemies The crossbowmen were each winding their string tight for a new quarrel. The quiva had sought and found the heart of two before even they realized I was upon them. Then another fell. Harold, wrists still bound behind his back, hurled himself against two men and, screaming, they pitched backward into the Yellow Pool of Turia. Saphrar cried out and darted away.

The remaining two guardsmen, who had no crossbows, simultaneously whipped out their swords. Behind them, quiva poised in his fingertips, I could see the hooded Paravaci.

I shielded myself from the flight of the Paravaci quiva by rushing towards the two guardsmen. But before I reached them my quiva, with the underhand hilt cast, had struck the guardsman on my left. I moved to his right and from his strengthless hand, even before he fell, tore his weapon.

"Down!" cried Harold, and I fell to the floor barely sensible of the silverish quiva of the Paravaci speeding overhead. I took the attack of the second guardsman by rolling on my back and flinging up my blade in defence. Four times he struck and each time I parried and then I had regained my feet. He fell back from my blade, turned once and fell into the glistening, living liquid of the Yellow Pool of Turia.

I spun to face the Paravaci but he, weaponless, with a curse, turned and from the room.

From the breast of the first guardsman I removed the quiva, wiping it on his tunic.

I stepped to Harold and with one motion severed the bonds that constrained him.

"Not badly done for a Koroban," he granted.

We heard running feet approaching, those of several men, the clank of arms, the high-pitched, enraged screaming of Saphrar of Turia.

"Hurry!" I cried.

Together we ran ate-out the perimeter of the pool until we came to a tangle of vines depending from the ceiling, up which we climbed, broke through the blue substance, and cast wildly about for an avenue of escape. There would be such, for the ceiling had been unbroken by a door or panel, and there must surely be some provision for the rearrangement and replacement of energy bulbs. We quickly found the exit, though it was only a panel some two feet by two feet, of a size for slaves to crawl through. It was locked but we kicked it open, splintering the bolt from the wood, and emerged on a narrow, unrailed balcony.

I had the guardsman’s sword and my quiva, Harold his quiva alone.

He had, running swiftly, climbed up the outside of a dome concentric to the one below, and was there looking about.

"There it is!" he cried.

"What?" I demanded. "Tarns! Kaiila!"

"No," he cried, "Saphrar’s Pleasure Gardens!" and disappeared down the other side of the dome.

"Come back!" I cried.

But he was gone.

Angry, I sped about the dome, not wishing to silhouette myself against the sky on its curve, lest there be enemy bowmen within range.

About a hundred and fifty yards away, over several small roofs and domes, all within the vast compound that was the House of Saphrar of Turia, I saw the high walls of what was undoubtedly a Pleasure Garden. I could see, here and there, on the inside, the tops of graceful flower trees.

-I could also see Harold bounding along, from roof to roof, in the light of the three moons.

Furious I followed him.

Could I have but put my hands on him at the time I might have wrung a Tuchuk neck.

I now saw him leap to the wall and, scarcely looking about, run along and then leap to the swaying trunk of one of the flower trees and descend swiftly into the darkness of the gardens.

In a moment I followed him.