"You little fool!" The words seemed to come to her from across a great distance. "Try that again, and I'll—"
There sounded a sharp ringing "crack," and Dylara staggered back, her left cheek flaming from the force of an open-handed blow.
The slap transformed the girl from a dazed, bewildered child into an infuriated tigress; and for the next few moments Meltor had all he could do to keep from being badly mauled.
Exhausted, she finally sank to her knees and burst into a storm of tears. Meltor stood by, more or less winded himself, fingering a long scratch alongside his nose, waiting for the girl to regain composure.
At last he pulled her to her feet, and urged her along the path into the west. Dylara, her once spotless tunic grimy and torn, accompanied him docilely now, too weary to resist. She knew by this time that Jotan had nothing to do with her abduction; no hireling of his would dare handle her so roughly.
An hour later they entered a small clearing, deep in the heart of the jungle. In the center of the open ground stood a rambling, one-storied building of gray stone, weather-beaten and unkempt, its unprotected windows staring vacantly like the dull lifeless eyes of a corpse. Despite the flame-tipped rays of the mid-afternoon sun which flooded the clearing, Dylara shivered, conscious of the miasmatic atmosphere of the place.
Nor was Meltor entirely unaffected by the eerie aspect of dead Rydob's former residence. Details of stories he had heard about the old hermit came to him now, and he caught himself glancing nervously about.
A short series of stone steps led to the half open door. A profusion of vines and creepers had sprung up unchecked, partially covering the stairway. Meltor cautiously kicked the vegetation away, aware it might be the hiding place of little Sleeza, the snake—Sleeza, whose bite meant a lingering, painful death.
Suddenly the man jumped back, voicing a yell of terror, and almost upsetting Dylara. His prodding foot had torn away a curtain of foliage, disclosing the bleached skeleton of a man, stretched out on one of the steps. The skull had rolled a few paces away, and lay there grinning malevolently up at them.
Dylara shuddered, shrank back. She had seen the bones of man before; but under present conditions and surroundings the gleaming skeleton seemed a horrible prophecy of her own fate.