"You leave me little choice, then." Vydys was almost purring. "I must have protection against Zenaor and his ourobos. Unless you share the crystal's secret with me, I shall be forced to sell the wench back to her father for tanagree oil to drive off the slime-monsters."
Dry-lipped, Craig said, "So be it."
"But I had such pleasant fantasies of how I would amuse myself with her in my torture chambers!" Vydys' eyes grew wide and doleful. "There are so many things that one can try! And a young, nubile girl may live for hours...."
Craig bit down hard to keep from shuddering.
"But since you will not help me—" Vydys sighed, turned, walked up the dais. "At least, your death shall entertain my favorites."
Craig would have lunged for her, then.
But she struck a great gong sharply. Instantly, the dazzling light-wall blazed forth to shield her. Guards leaped from nowhere to seize the Earthman. Their blows made his head ring.
"To the pit with him!" Vydys cried shrilly. "To the pit!"
Craig's world resolved into a nightmare of dank corridors and blows and blackness.
Then, suddenly, he was in the open once again, tottering on the rim of a deep, walled trench that ran about a side-shaft of the Vydys' tower like a sort of moat.