"But why—" began the princess, then realized she was addressing thin air. Tharn had gone, speeding through the trees into the north.
His mate was in danger! The thought echoed and re-echoed in his mind, even as logic told him it was next to impossible for Dylara to be elsewhere than in Urim's palace. Yet he would stake the evidence of his senses against reason itself—as, indeed, he was doing now.
If his passage through the trees with Alurna had been rapid, he was literally flying now—hurling himself from one branch to another with reckless fury—taking chances he ordinarily would never have considered.
While ever stronger to his nostrils came the scent of Sadu—and of Dylara.
At last he caught sight of her, seated on a fallen log at the edge of a trail, carefully massaging an ankle.
And at the same instant, from his elevated position, he caught sight of Sadu a few paces behind the unheeding daughter of Majok. The beast was lying belly-flat behind a curtain of vines; and even as Tharn discovered him the cat was preparing to spring.
The man of the caves never hesitated. Like a falling stone he plummeted earthward, dropping in front of Sadu as the beast rose in its spring.
Dylara, aroused by crashing foliage, leaped to her feet and whirled about. She cried out awe-struck wonder as she saw the young man who had died beneath a Sepharian club standing between her and an on-rushing lion.
Powerless to move, she watched the Cro-Magnard crouch to meet certain death. In the single instant that elapsed before Sadu reached him, she saw Tharn's hands were empty.