Jotan shook his head. "I don't believe they got her. There were no signs of a struggle. No ... bones." His voice faltered on that last word, and he threw his hands wide in sick bewilderment. "I don't know what to think!"
The princess Alurna spoke up suddenly in silken tones. "Have you forgotten so soon, O noble Jotan, the cave girl's own words?"
Jotan stared deep into the faintly mocking gray-green eyes of Urim's daughter. "What do you mean?" he said stiffly.
"Did she not say: 'I would escape and return to the caves of Majok, my father'? Did those words mean so little to you?"
Harsh lines deepened at the corners of Jotan's lips. "Yes, she said that. But she would not try to get away at night. Especially tonight, when there are the God knows how many lions roaming about the camp. The hardiest warrior would not dare that, let alone a frail girl."
"How long," Tamar broke in, "will you go on thinking of Dylara as a 'frail' girl? Can't you understand that she is not our kind of woman? She does not fear the jungle: all that she needed was a chance to get into it without our seeing her, and tonight she was given that chance. You have Sadu to thank for that."
For several long minutes Jotan sat there without speaking, his gaze fixed unseeingly on the leaping flames of the campfire. What strange currents and cross-currents, he mused, had been set into motion by his love for the girl of the caves. There was the steadily widening rift with Tamar—Tamar whose only flaw was his stiff-necked pride in lineage and noble blood—Tamar, who was his closest friend, his almost constant companion since boyhood. Together they had learned the arts of hunting and fighting, together they had served as fellow officers in Jaltor's armies, together they had crossed those interminable stretches of jungle, plain and mountain between Ammad and far-off Sephar. Could he afford to risk an almost certain break with Tamar by pursuing further his mad infatuation for the missing cave girl?
There was another complication, too—one leaving him open for repercussions even more unpleasant than the loss of a friend. There was no doubt in his mind but that the Princess Alurna was in love with him. He knew that in the eyes of his family and friends she would make any man a mate to be proud of. From the standpoint of beauty alone she was almost as lovely as Dylara. More than that, however, Alurna was the niece of Jaltor, monarch of all Ammad and a personal friend of Jotan's own father. Jotan shuddered slightly. He could well imagine Jaltor's reaction upon learning that the daughter of his dead brother had been spurned in favor of a half-wild woman of the caves!
And then the lithe, softly curved body of Dylara came unbidden before his mind's eye ... and all else was forgotten. He rose stiffly from where he sat among his friends, conscious from their expressions that they knew he had arrived at a decision affecting them all.
"When the dawn comes," he said in a strangely toneless voice, "we break camp and continue on toward Ammad. Not all of us will go on, however. A few warriors shall accompany me in search of Dylara ... and I shall not return without her!"