Chapter I

ALIEN DREAM

It seemed to Eric Nelson that a strange voice spoke in his mind as he lay in drink-drugged sleep, here in the squalid inn of a Chinese frontier village.

"Shall I kill, little sister?"

The voice was mental, not physical. His brain recorded it, not through his ears but directly.

And it was not human. There was an alien quality in its vibration that set even his dreaming mind bristling.

"No, Turk! You were to watch, not to kill! Not — yet!"

To Nelson the answering mental voice seemed human enough. But though it lacked the uncannily alien quality of the first, it was chill, silvery, merciless.

He knew that he was dreaming. He knew that he lay here in the battle-wrecked frontier village of Yen Shi, that he had drunk too much to forget the doom that stared him and his companions in the face, that fatigue and too much liquor were doing this to him.

Yet it was creepily real, this swift, urgent dialogue of voices that only his mind could hear. And again his nerves crawled at the non-human strangeness of the first voice.

"They should all die now, little sister! For he even now seeks them out, to hire them as our foes! Ei has brought me word!"

"Turk, no! Watch only till I order—"

Nerve-tension snapped and Eric Nelson found himself scrambling up from his blankets, staring wildly around the dark room.

A black flying shadow leaped for the open window and was gone as his blurred eyes focused — a shadow that was not human!

With a strangled exclamation, Nelson lurched to the window, plucking the heavy pistol from his belt.

Great wings flapped suddenly out there in the night, rapidly receeding. He leveled the pistol but he could see nothing, and after a moment there were no more sounds.

Eric Nelson stood bewildered, his skin still creeping from the uncanny terror of the experience. His brain was fogged by sleep and by the sick aftertaste of the previous night's drinking.

Gradually his bristling nerves quieted. There was nothing out there in the dark-nothing but the few blinking lights of the wretched mud village, cowering underneath the silent stars, close beside the black wall of the great mountains that shouldered all the way to Tibet.

Dawn was coming. Nelson holstered his gun and ran his hands heavily over his unshaven face. Waves of pain surged up through his eyeballs as he turned from the window.

"Too much to drink," he muttered. "No wonder I'm hearing — and seeing — things."

He made a deliberate effort to thrust down the uncanny strangeness of his experience, to forget it. But he couldn't, quite.

It was not the mere fact of the voices that was so weird. The brain heard strange things in dreams. It was the alien, somehow husky quality of that first voice that still shook him.

Nelson lit a clay oil-lamp. Its flickering rays and the growing light of dawn showed nothing unusual hi the bare, squalid little room. He put on his uniform-jacket and went through a door into the common-room of the deserted inn. Three of his four fellow-officers were in the room.

Two of them, the big Dutchman, Piet Van Voss, and Lefty Wister, the spidery little Cockney, were snoring in their bunks.

Nick Sloan, the third, stood shaving in front of a tiny steel mirror, his big body easily balanced on firm-set feet, his flat, hard brown face looking coolly over his shoulder at Nelson.

"I heard you yell in there," Sloan said. "Bad dream?"

Eric Nelson hesitated. "I don't know. There was something in the room. A shadow—"

"I'm not surprised," Sloan drawled unsympathetically. "You were pretty stiff last night."

Nelson was suddenly resentfully aware of the contrast of his disheveled figure and tumbled blond hair with Sloan's competent neatness.

"Yes, I was drunk last night," he said harshly. "And I'll be drunk again tonight and tomorrow night also."

A patient voice sighed from the doorway. "Not tomorrow night, Captain Nelson. No."

Nelson turned. It was Li Kin who stood in the doorway. He made an absurd figure, his scrawny little body swathed in a major's uniform far too big for him. His gentle, fine-planed face was sagging with weariness and behind his thick-lensed spectacles his black eyes held sadness.

"A full column of the Chinese Red Army is on its way here from Nun-Yan," he said. "It will be here by tomorrow noon."

Nick Sloan's tawny eyes narrowed slightly. "That's pretty fast action. But it's only what we expected."

Yes, Eric Nelson thought heavily. It was only what they had expected.

They five had been staff officers for Yu Chi, a onetime minor warlord in the old China who had fled the country when the Communists took over. For years, Yu Chi had made his base in the no-man's-land of wild mountains that thrust up like a fist between China, Burma and Tibet, a region where boundaries and sovereignties were shadowy things. Every so often the old warlord, posing as a liberator, had made a foray which pretended to be a guerrilla action against the Reds but which was really a looting raid.

Of the five of them, Li Kin was the only one with any patriotic motives. The others were frankly mercenaries, picking up whatever they could in the troubles of southeast Asia. Nelson had been such a mercenary for ten years, ever since the Korean War ended and he decided that he liked adventure too much to go home. Nick Sloan had been in Asia nearly as long. Van Voss and the little Cockney were fugitive criminals, but tough fighting-men.

But now the five were at the end of their rope. Yu Chi had gone on one "liberation" raid too many, and had walked into a tiger-trap of Red troops here. They had won the battle, and the town. But Yu Chi was dead, his motley army had broken up, and when Communist reinforcements reached the village, there would be short shrift for five mercenaries.

"We've got to get out of here by tomorrow morning or we're cooked," Nick Sloan said curtly.

Lefty Wister had awakened and stood, a cigarette drooping laxly from his thin lips. Van Voss was stretching hugely in his bunk, scratching his enormous paunch as he listened.

"Where can we go without running into the bloody Red troops?" whined the little Cockney.

Nelson shrugged. "North, east and south we'd walk right into their hands. West there's only the Kunlun Mountains, and without a guide we'd merely dodge around in there until the tribesmen got us."

Li Kin raised his tired head. "That reminds me. A tribesman from those mountains wanted to talk to me last night. Something about hiring us to fight for his people."

Van Voss grunted. "Some verdommte Trans-Tibetan tribe that wants a few machine-guns to crush their neighbors."

Sloan's hard face was thoughtful. "It might be an out, though. In those mountains, if we knew our way, we'd be safe. Where is the man?"

"Still waiting outside, I think," said the Chinese. "I'll get him." He went heavily toward the doorway.

Nelson looked after him without interest, simply because he was sick of looking at Sloan and Van Voss and Wister.

Through the open door he watched Li Kin cross the dusty compound to a crumbling mud wall, where another man sat — a bareheaded man in shapeless quilted garments, sitting motionless in the light of the rising sun. He did not sit with the patient immobility of peaceful things but with the tight-coiled watchfulness of a crouching tiger. He rose with a lithe quick movement when Li Kin spoke to him.

Li Kin and the stranger came back across the compound. As they entered the room Li Kin said, "This is Shan Kar."

Nelson glanced indifferently. Shan Kar was of his own age and stature but no more like himself than a wildcat is like a terrier. His bare black head was alertly erect as he studied the white men.

Here was no primitive tribesman The man's handsome olive face and dark eyes had the haughty strength and fire and pride of a prince of ancient blood.

Eric Nelson sat up.

"You're no Tibetan," he said sharply, in that language.

"No," answered Shan Kar quickly. His accent was slurred as though spoken in an obscure dialect of Tibetan.

He pointed through the open door at the gray, sunlit mountains in the distance.

"My people dwell there, in a valley called L'Lan. And we men and woman of L'Lan have — enemies."

There was a flicker of emotion in his eyes as he spoke, fierce as a sword-flash. His eyes were, for that moment, fiery and intense, the eyes of a fanatic warrior, of a man with a cause.

"Enemies too powerful for us to conquer with our own forces! We have heard of the white men's new, powerful weapons. So I came to hire such men and weapons to help us in our struggle."

Nelson felt suddenly certain that Shan Kar referred to no mere petty tribal struggle. This man was not playing his game of war for horses, women or conquest, but for something bigger.

Shan Kar shrugged. "I heard of the warlord Yu Chi and came here to make an offer to him. But, before I arrived he was dead in the battle here. But you who remain know the use of such weapons. It you come with me to L'Lan and use them, we can pay you well."

"Pay us?" Nick Sloan's face showed his sharp interest. "Pay us with what?"

For answer, Shan Kar reached beneath his quilted cloak and brought forth a curious object which he handed to them.

"We have heard that this metal is valuable, to you of the outer world."

Eric Nelson puzzledly examined the thing. It was a thick hoop of dull gray metal, a ring several inches in diameter. Mounted on opposite sides of the metal hoop were two small disks of quartz. There was something odd about the little quartz disks. Each was only an inch across, but each had a carven pattern of interlocking spirals that baffled and blurred the vision.

Lefty Wister whined scornfully, "The bleody beggar wants to hire us with a hoop of old iron!"

"Iron? No," grunted Van Voss. "I see that metal down in the Sumatra mines. It is platinum."

"Platinum? Let me see that!" exclaimed Sloan. He closely examined the gray metal hoop. "By heaven, it is!"

His tawny eyes narrowed as he looked up at the silent, watching stranger? "Where did this come from?"

"From L'Lan," answered Shan Kar. "There is more there — much more. All you can take away will be yours as pay."

Nick Sloan swung around on Nelson. "Nelson, this could be big. All the years you and I have been out here, we haven't had an opportunity like this."

The Cockney's eyes were already shining covetously. Van Voss merely stared sleepily at the metal hoop.

Eric Nelson fingered it again and asked, "Where exactly did it come from? It looks almost like a queer instrument of some kind rather than an ornament."

Shan Kar answered evasively, "It came from a cavern in L'Lan. And there is much more metal like it there."

Li Kin said slowly, "A cavern in L'Lan? That name sounds familiar, somehow. I think there was a legend once—"

Shan Kar interrupted. "Your answer, white men — will you come?"

Nelson hesitated. There was too much about this business that was unexplained. Yet they dared not stay here in Yen Shi.

He finally told Shan Kar, "I'll commit myself to no bargains in the dark. But I'm willing to go to your valley. If the setup is as you say, we'll fight your battle — for platinum."

Sloan planned swiftly. "We can get a few light machine-guns and what tommy-guns and grenades we need from old Yu's arsenal. But it'll take work to round up enough pack-ponies by tomorrow morning."

His face crisped in resolve. "We can do it, though. We'll be ready to start at dawn, Shan Kar."

When Shan Kar had gone Lefty Wister uttered a crow of laughter.

"The bloody fool! Don't he realize that with machine-guns and grenades we can just take his platinum and walk off with it?"

Nelson turned angrily on the evilly eager little Cockney. "We'll do nothing of the sort! If we do agree to fight for this man, we'll—"

Suddenly Nelson stopped short, startled and shaken by abrupt remembrance. Remembrance of his weird dream of only an hour before, the dream in which human and unhuman voices had spoken in his mind!

"They should all die now, little sister! For he even now seeks them out to hire them as our foes!"

That alien, unhuman mental voice — had it been real after all? For Shan Kar had just provisionally hired them to fight enemies of whom they knew nothing! Into what mysterious struggle were they entering?

Chapter II

STRANGE BEASTS

The haunting memory of fantastic nightmare still oppressed Eric Nelson as he sat moodily late that night in the single drink-shop surviving in the battered village.

He was bone-weary from the long day's urgent work of rounding up pack-ponies. That and habit were why he had insisted to Li Kin that they stop at this mud-walled tavern whose fat Cantonese proprietor had somehow hoarded a few cases of imitation Scotch.

"Sloan and the others will need us to help pack," murmured Li Kin. He looked tired, his fine eyes blinking behind the thick spectacles. "We should go."

"In a little while," Nelson nodded. "They can get the stuff out of old Yu's arsenal and pack it without us anyway."

He tilted the square bottle, looking unseeingly at the wretched few tables whose grotesque shadows wavered on the crumbling mud walls as the oil-lamp flickered.

Why did that weird little experience stick in his mind like a burr? A dream of strange, coldly menacing voices in his mind, a shadow leaping across his room, a sound of great wings in the night-what was there in those to disturb him so?

"Yet it's cursed queer about Shan Kar," he muttered, half to himself.

Li Kin's head bobbed in earnest agreement. "Very queer. For today I have remembered about L'Lan."

Nelson stared at him blankly. "L'Lan? Oh, that's the name of the fellow's valley back in the mountains. I wasn't thinking of that."

"I have been thinking of it very much," the little Chinese officer affirmed. He leaned across the rough table. "You've been in China a long time, Captain Nelson. Have you never heard the name?"

"No, I never—" Nelson began, then stopped.

He did remember something.

"Magic valley of L'Lan! Long and long ago in L’Lan were born the Yang and Yin — life and death, good and evil, joy and sorrow!"

It came dimly back into Nelson's mind across seven war-crowded years, the rapt talk of that blind old seer whom he'd saved from the murderous guerrillas.

"Still, still lives L'Lan the golden, deep in the guarding mountains! Still lives in L’Lan the ancient Brotherhood, for that hidden heartland of the world was the valley of creation!"

"I remember the story now," Nelson admitted. "A sort of Central Asian Garden-of-Eden myth."

"Yes, a myth, a legend," Li Kin said earnestly. "Yet this man Shan Kar says that he comes from L'Lan!"

Eric Nelson shrugged. " 'Nature imitates Art,' said Wilde. The tribe out there in the mountains probably named their valley after the legend."

"Perhaps so," Li Kin said doubtfully. He got to his feet. "Should we not go now?"

"Go along and tell Sloan I'll be there soon," Nelson said carelessly.

Li Kin's eyes nickered to the emptied Scotch bottle, and he hesitated a moment "Remember, we have to get away by morning."

"I'll be there," snapped Nelson and the little Chinese went silently out.

Eric Nelson looked after the little man with a sympathy he felt neither for himself not his three other fellow-officers. Li Kin was a patriot, an absurdly impractical patriot whose fervent dreams had set his feet stumbling through the quagmire of China's civil wars to this blind-alley end.

The other three and he himself, Nelson thought with savage self-contempt, were not patriots, nor dreamers nor anything but soldiers of fortune.

Soldiers of fortune? The phrase lent an ironical twist to his lips. He and his fellow mercenaries were so far removed from the gay, gallant connotations of that name. Nick Sloan was a cool ruthless self-seeker, Van Voss a moronic sadist, Lefty Wister a spidery criminal.

And he, Eric Nelson? He, least of all, fitted that glamorous name. He was thirty years old, and the best years of his life had no other memorial than forgotten battles. Now he was a fugitive whose only out was to hire himself to Shan Kar's mountain people.

* * *

Nelson swept the empty Scotch bottle off the table to crash in splinters against the mud wall.

"Am I a dog to sit here untended?" he demanded of the fat Cantonese. "Bring another."

The liquor had lighted his somber mood by the time he went out into the night an hour later.

The few blinking lights along Yen Shi's wrecked and wretched streets danced in a cheerful rosy glow as he stalked along.

"I'm tired of Yen Shi anyway!" he thought as he, elbowed between shadowy, shuffling peasants. "San Kar's mountains will be new, at least."

"L’Lan, L'Lan the golden, inhere the ancient Brotherhood still lives— "

Now what was this Brotherhood that the old seer had talked of so raptly? And if it was so important, why hadn't Shan Kar mentioned it?

Eric Nelson stopped suddenly. Green eyes blazed at him from directly ahead in the gloom.

A huge tawny dog crouched there, staring at him. Only it wasn't a dog.

"A wolf," he told himself, as his hand went to the heavy pistol at his belt. "I'm not that drunk."

He was a little drunk, yes, but even so he could see that the beast was too big for a dog, its massive head too wide, its crouching tenseness too feral.

Its green eyes watched him with hypnotic intensity.

Nelson was deliberately raising his gun when a soft voice spoke from the darkness beyond the animal.

"He will not harm you," said a girl's voice in accented Tibetan dialect. "He is — mine."

She came toward him out of the shadows, past the crouching beast.

It was hard to see her clearly because Nelson's vision was obscured by the alcohol in his brain.

But he felt that this girl was special enough to justify the effort.

The way she moved, for one thing — she was light on her feet with a sort of gliding grace that belonged to an animal rather than to a town-bred human.

Nelson had never seen a woman move that way before and he wanted to see more of it — much more of it.

She wore the conventional dark jacket and trousers and at first he took it for granted that she was Chinese. Her hair was black enough, clustered around her shoulders as though she had brought part of the night with her into the lamplight. But it was soft wavy hair and the face it framed was the wrong color, a smooth, olive tan and the wrong shape.

Vaguely Nelson had a feeling that only recently he had somewhere seen an olive face like that, finely wrought and strong and just a little arrogant — only it had been a man's face.

Her great, grave dark eyes were looking up at him provocatively. Yet there was something oddly childlike about the innocence of her red mouth, the delicate tanned planes of her face.

''I am Nsharra, white lord," she said softly, her glance tilting to meet his eyes. "I have seen you in the village before the battle."

Nelson laughed. "I haven't seen you before. Nor that wolf-dog, either. I'd remember you both."

She came a step closer.

Through the alcoholic haze that fogged his mind Nelson saw her dark eyes studying him.

"You look tired and sad, lord," Nsharra murmured. "You are — lonely?"

Nelson's first impulse was to toss her a coin and be on his way. In his ten years in China he hadn't sunk so low as to meddle with village street-girls.

But this girl was different. It might be the Scotch that made her seem so, but her smooth face and slumbrous eyes had a beauty that held him.

"My hut is very near," she was saying, looking up at him with an oddly shy little smile.

"And why not?" Nelson said suddenly in English. "What difference does it make now?"

Nsharra understood his tone if not his words.

Her small hand on his arm guided him softly through the shadows.

The mud hut was on the fringe of the village. In the starlight Nelson saw the looming bulk of a great black stallion standing outside it.

The horse was fire-eyed, its ears alertly erect, yet it stood quietly and there was neither rope nor halter upon it.

"Yours?" Nelson said to her, and then laughed. "Good thing Nick Sloan hasn't seen him. He likes fine horses."

He was not completely drunk, not drunk at all, he told himself He knew quite well the incongruity of a village singsong girl owning a wolf-dog and a stallion but in his rosy, reckless mood he didn't pause to wonder or care.

The interior of the hut was a squalid cubicle that wavered out of darkness when the girl lit a candle. As she straightened, Nelson took her into his arms.

For just a moment, Nsharra struggled, then relaxed. But her lips remained cool and unmoved under his.

"I have wine," she murmured, a little breathlessly. "Let me—"

The rice wine was a pungent fire in his throat and Nelson knew he should drink no more of it. But it was too easy to sit here on the soft mat and watch Nsharra's delicate, grave face as her slim hands refilled his cup.

"You will come again to see me, tomorrow or the next night, white lord?" she murmured, as she handed him the cup.

"The name is Eric Nelson and I won't be back tomorrow night for I won't be in Yen Shi," he laughed. "So tonight is all there is."

Her dark eyes fixed on his face, suddenly intent. "Then you and your comrades leave at once with Shan Kar?"

"Shan Kar?" The name brought a flash of memory to Nelson. "Now I remember who you remind me of! You've got the same olive complexion, the same features and the same accent—"

He broke off, staring at her. "What do you know of Shan Kar anyway?"

Nsharra shrugged slim shoulders. "All the village knows that he is a stranger from the mountains and that he seeks to hire you and your comrades to go back to his land with him."

Eric Nelson could believe that, for he had had past experience with the swiftness of gossip in an Oriental town. His fogged mind was still baffled, though, by the thing that didn't explain — the queer similarity between Shan Kar and Nsharra, as though they belonged to the same race.

All that didn't matter. What mattered was that this was the last night for him, that the girl's tapering fingers were light against his cheek, her breath warm in his ear.

Nelson gulped his wine and looked up from it to see the wolf-dog crouched in the open doorway of the hut, watching him with fixed, luminous green eyes.

And the great head and fiery eyes of the big stallion were watching too from out in the darkness. There was something perched on the stallion's back, something winged and rustling.

"Will you tell those two beasts to go away?" Nelson said thickly to the girl. "I don't like them. They look as though they were listening to every word."

The girl looked at the wolf-dog and horse. She did not speak. But wolf and stallion melted back into the darkness.

"Hatha and Tark mean no harm," Nsharra murmured soothingly. "They are my friends."

Deep in Nelson's mind, something in her words plucked another hidden string of memory, something that set up vaguely unpleasant vibrations in his brain.

But he couldn't think of that nor of the two queer beasts out there in the dark with his arm around Nsharra's pliant body and his lips on her soft mouth.

"Tark, do not kill! You were to watch, not to kill yet!"

The memory crashed suddenly through his mind, the memory of where he had heard that name before.

The weird dream of alien, menacing thought-voices, the flying shadow in his room and the sound of wings in the night-memory of them ripped the alcoholic fog from Eric Nelson's mind.

His hands suddenly gripped the girl's slim shoulders with bruising force. "You said 'Tark!'" he rasped. "You said it before when I thought I was dreaming. You were talking somehow to that wolf!"

The caution and suspicion that had kept him alive for ten years in China's wars were all on the alert at this moment, dominating Nelson.

He glared at the girl. "You got me here for a reason. You know Shan Kar, you're of his race. Why are you spying on him?"

Nsharra looked back into his accusing eyes, with a little hurt look on her delicate face. She spoke softly.

She said, "Kill now, Tark!"

The wolf-dog was a dark thunderbolt that leaped in from the doorway and knocked Nelson sprawling as Nsharra jerked swiftly back.

Nelson made one abortive gesture toward his gun and then knew that, before he could draw it, his throat would be cut. He wrapped his arms around his own neck as he rolled with the wolf-dog's hairy weight on top of him.

He felt needle-sharp fangs rip his forearm. The most horrible part of the moment was that the wolf-dog sought his life in complete silence, without growl or snarl.

Then the great stallion screamed outside the hut and a gun roared. Nelson heard Nsharra's flying feet and silvery cry.

"Tark! Hatha — Ei! We go!"

"Nelson!" yelled Li Kin's startled voice.

Nelson became aware that the wolf-dog was no longer atop him. He scrambled to his feet, dazed and shaken.

The hut was empty. He stumbled to the door, and caromed into Li Kin. The little Chinese officer had his automatic in his hand and wore a stunned look in his spectacled eyes.

"I followed you, Nelson!" he babbled. "I saw you come to this hut with the girl but when I came near the stallion attacked me! I shot at it and missed."

"The girl? Where's the girl now?" Nelson cried. He was cold sober now and his daze was dissolving in red anger.

"She and the wolf burst out, knocked me over and fled!" Li Kin cried. "See, there they go!"

Nelson got a shadowy glimpse of a stallion and rider and a slinking wolf-shape racing westward down the dusty road in the uncertain starlight.

Over stallion, rider and wolf, moving west with them against the stars, flew a winged black soaring thing.

"There was something on the stallion's back when I came!" Li Kin exclaimed. "An eagle or other great bird — it's queer!"

"It's more than queer," rasped Eric Nelson. He gripped the slashed forearm that was beginning to throb and burn. "Come on — I want to see this man Shan Kar!"

Li Kin kept recurring to the beasts as they slogged hastily through dark dusty streets toward the inn.

"She spoke to them, as though they were people! She was like a witch, a mistress of kuei, with her familiars!"

"Will you forget those animals?" Nelson snapped.

He was angry and he was angry because he was a little afraid. He had been afraid before, many times, but not of something as uncanny as this, not of a girl and three beasts and a dream.

* * *

The dark courtyard of the inn echoed with the stamping and trampling of scores of hoofs. Shaggy little ponies were squealing and biting in protest as Nick Sloan and Lefty and Van Voss loaded the heavy packs from the arsenal onto them.

Nelson found Shan Kar in the corner of the courtyard, a dark, tense figure impatiently watching the hurried preparations.

"Just who is Nsharra?" Nelson asked him flatly.

Shan Kar turned like a goaded leopard. The light from the inn's window showed the narrowed gleam of the man's eyes.

"What do you know of Nsharra?" asked Shan Kar.

"She's one of your own people, isn't she?" Nelson pressed. "She comes from L'Lan too?"

Shan Kar's handsome face was taut and dark. "What do you know of Nsharra?" he repeated dangerously.

Eric Nelson knew then that he had failed in his attempt to surprise full explanation from the other.

Li Kin broke in excitedly. "A girl with a stallion and a wolf and an eagle! They would have killed Nelson if I had not interrupted! But they got away!"

Shan Kar, staring beyond them, spoke softly between his teeth. "Nsharra here — and Tark and Hatha and Ei too! Then they have followed me and watched me."

"Who is she? What does it mean?" Nelson demanded.

Shan Kar answered with brooding slowness. "She is daughter of Kree, Guardian of the Brotherhood — the enemies of my people!"

He added tightly, "And it means that the Brotherhood is striking at us even before we reach L'Lan. We must go swiftly if we are ever to reach the valley!"

Chapter III

INTO MYSTERY

They had gone swiftly. Two weeks and half a thousand miles of the wildest mountains on Earth lay behind them. They were still climbing as the fifteenth day gathered toward the explosive climax of sunset.

Eric Nelson looked back down the shoulder of the great gray mountain and saw the little line of heavily laden pack-ponies crawling up the trail after him like a disjointed hairy snake.

Ahead of them the treeless slope they climbed went up to a ridge against the sky like a springboard into infinity. Against the glory of fusing colors that fired the western heavens, Shan Kar and his mount loomed bigger than life.

Shan Kar stopped suddenly, pointed skyward and uttered a yell.

"Now what?" exclaimed Nick Sloan, riding beside Nelson. "Do you suppose he's sighted his valley? He said we would tonight."

"No, something's wrong!" Eric Nelson said quickly. He spurred forward, his tired shaggy pony manfully responding.

They reached Shan Kar at the very crest of the ridge. From here they looked westward toward another and parallel gigantic mountain range. Its highest, northern peaks were snow-capped and beyond it was a dim stupendous vista of still other ranges.

Between this next great rampart and the one on whose crest they stood yawned a deep gorge, wooded thickly with fir and poplar and larch. Shadows were already deepening in the forests down there.

This was the mountain wilderness that stretched between the southeastern Kunlun Ranges and Koko Nor. And it was still one of the least-known parts of Earth.

Warplanes had flown over this mountainous no-man's-land in the last few years. A few explorers like Hedin had, at great peril, toiled across sectors of it. But most of it was as little-known as when the French missionaries, Hue and Gabet, had trudged through it a hundred years before. There was little here to tempt exploration, and there were hostile Tibetan and Mongol tribes to discourage it.

"Your guns!" Shan Kar was shouting as Nelson and Sloan rode up. "Shoot them, quickly!"

He was pointing skyward. Bewildered, Eric Nelson looked up. There was nothing in the fire-shot heavens but two eagles planing down a thousand feet above the ridge.

"There's nothing up there—" Nelson began puzzledly, when Shan Kar interrupted.

"The eagles! Kill them or our danger is great!"

It hit Nelson in the face. It brought back all the uncanny memory of Nsharra and her weird animal companions — a memory he had deliberately sought to rationalize and forget during the two weeks' trek.

Shan Kar was in deadly earnest. His black eyes glared hatred and fear at the two bkck winged shapes swooping in smooth circles through the sunset.

"Cursed native superstitions!" Nick Sloan grunted. "But I suppose we have to humor him."

Sloan had unslung his rifle from his saddle. He aimed at the lowest of the two black-winged shapes and fired.

There was a horrid, shrill scream across the heavens. It did not come from the eagle that was suddenly plummeting earthward with crumpled wings. It came from the other great bird and, as it screamed, it was swiftly hurtling upward and westward in flight.

"The other!" cried Shan Kar. "He must not get away!"

Sloan fired again, and again. But the second eagle was already a receding dot against the sunset.

Shan Kar clenched his fists, staring after it. "He'll take word to L'Lan. But maybe—"

He started in a run toward the spot farther down the ridge where the first eagle had fallen.

"What the—?" Sloan exclaimed, lowering his rifle. "Is he crazy?"

"Native superstition of some kind," Eric Nelson said but was coldly conscious that he did not believe it himself.

The two eagles, in their purposeful reconnoitering of the pack-train, had been too uncannily reminiscent of Nsharra's strangely purposeful horse and wolf and eagle.

* * *

Li Kin and the Cockney had come up. Lefty Wister's pinched red face was glistening with alarm.

"What happened? And what's the bloody native doing down there?"

They could see that Shan Kar, farther down the ridge, had reached the fallen eagle. Nelson and the others followed hastily.

The eagle was not dead. Its wing had been broken by Sloan's bullet and it had been flopping away across the rocky ridge in evident effort to escape when Shan Kar stopped it.

Shan Kar looped a hide thong about the great bird's legs, hobbling it. The eagle, a magnificent creature of glistening black plumage and white-crested head, glared at Shan Kar with wonderful golden eyes, trying to strike with its beak.

Shan Kar grasped the crippled wing of the eagle by the tip and deliberately twisted it, tormenting the great bird.

"What the devil!" flamed Nelson. "Put the thing out of its misery!"

The eagle glanced at him swiftly with a flash of golden eyes. It was as though the bird understood. It brought Nelson creepy memory of the intent, intelligent look in the eyes of Nsharra's beasts — of Tark, the wolf, and Hatha, the stallion!

"Let me alone," Shan Kar said tightly, without turning his gaze from the eagle's eyes. "This is necessary."

"Necessary — to torture a dumb animal?" Nelson snapped.

"He can tell me what I must know," Shan Kar retorted. "And he is no dumb animal. He is one of the Brotherhood, of our enemies."

"Blimey, the man's cracked!" exclaimed Lefty Wister.

Shan Kar disregarded them all. He was staring fixedly into the splendid eyes of the wounded bird.

Nelson almost thought he could hear question and answer, inside his mind. Telepathic questions put by Shan Kar — and stubborn, defiant answer by the crippled eagle!

Could man and beast talk telepathically? His weird dream flashed back into his memory. Shan Kar, eyes narrowing, suddenly twisted the crippled wing again. A spasm of agony shook the eagle.

It turned its head convulsively, looked up at Eric Nelson. In that look, Nelson read tortured pain — and appeal!

His pistol came into his hand and cracked. The head of the eagle became a bloody mess and its wings relaxed in death.

Shan Kar leaped to his feet, his eyes flaming as he faced Nelson. "You should not have done that! I would have made him tell me!"

"Tell you what? What could an eagle tell you?" Sloan demanded incredulously.

Shan Kar made a visible effort to repress his anger. He spoke rapidly, his fierce eyes sweeping them.

"We can't camp here now. We must move on tonight, and move fast. The Brotherhood will be out after us now that the other winged one has taken back word of our coming."

His hands clenched. "I feared it would be so! Nsharra has reached L'Lan before us with warning and they have watchers out — like those two."

"What is this Brotherhood?" Eric Nelson demanded.

"I will explain that later, when we reach L'Lan," answered the other.

Nelson took a step forward. "You will explain now. It's time we got the truth about what faces us in L'Lan."

Nick Sloan, his flat brown face hard and suspicious, harshly seconded Nelson. "That's right, Shan Kar. It seems we're up against more than just a tribal war. Spill it or we'll backtrack out of here."

Shan Kar smiled thinly. "You want the platinum we can pay you. You won't go back to China to be shot."

"Not to China — but we can cross southward over the Kunlun," Sloan spat. "Don't think you have us in your hand. You need us worse than we need you. Talk or we walk out."

Shan Kar eyed them, his mind obviously busy behind the handsome olive mask of his face. Then he shrugged.

"There is not time to tell you everything. We must move fast or we are lost. Also-you would not believe all if I told you."

He hesitated. "This much I will tell you. There are two factions in L'Lan. One is the party of the Humanites, of which I am one of the leaders. The other party is the Brotherhood.

"We Humanites are all men and women as our name implies. We believe in the superiority of humanity to all other forms of life and are ready to fight for it. But the Brotherhood, our enemies, are not all men!"

Sloan stared. "What do you mean? What are those of the Brotherhood who are not men?"

"Beasts!" hissed Shan Kar. "Beasts who assert their equality with men! Yes, in L'Lan the wolf and tiger and eagle claim themselves the equals of humans!"

His black eyes flashed. "And they'll not stop there! The winged ones and the hairy ones and the clawed ones — all the forest clans — will eventually aspire to dominance over man! Is it strange that we Humanites are preparing to crush them before that can happen?"

There was stunned silence for a moment, then Lefty Wister's shrill laughter crowed. "Didn't I tell you the man was cracked? We've come half into Tibet on a wild-goose chase with a crazy native for guide!"

Nick Sloan's face darkened and he started toward Shan Kar. Eric Nelson intervened hastily.,

"Sloan, wait! That platinum was real enough!"

Sloan stopped. "So it was. And we're going to find its source. But we won't find it by listening to crazy talk of wild beasts plotting against men!"

"The beasts of the Brotherhood are not the brute beasts of your outer world!" flared Shan Kar. "They are intelligent, as intelligent as men."

He made a fierce gesture. "I knew you would not believe! It was why I dared not tell you! But you at least should know I speak truth!" He pointed to Nelson.

Nelson felt a queer chill. He did have an uncanny conviction that Shan Kar was speaking the truth. But the impossible couldn't be true. A witch-girl and her pets, a crippled eagle, a queer native's fantastic talk-was he for these to throw away his firm footing on the everyday earth?

“L’Lan the golden where the ancient Brotherhood still lives'" whispered Li Kin, quoting. "So that is what it means?"

Nick Sloan snapped the spell. "This is all moonshine, but we can talk it out later! Right now I want to know what the danger is that you claim threatens us! How far are we now from L'Lan?"

Shan Kar pointed at the great wall of mountains that rose on the other side of the deep wooded gorge.

"The valley L'Lan lies on the other side of those mountains. We are that close! But getting into it will be perilous now."

He hurried on. "There is only one pass into the valley. It leads into it near the city Vruun which is the heart of the Brotherhood. Yet we must pass Vruun to reach Anshan, the city in the south which we Humanites hold.

"I hoped to creep through the pass and past Vruun without detection. But if the Brotherhood's scout gets word back of our coming they'll move to block us at the pass. That is why we must hurry!"

Nelson and Sloan and the other three grasped at least the urgency of the situation. They had, all of them, fought too many battles and made too many forced marches not to understand strategy.

Eric Nelson told Sloan, "We'd better move as he says. We can get him to explain his queer statements later."

Sloan nodded, frowning. "He's either a liar or a superstitious fool. We'll find out later. Right now I smell trouble."

The sun was setting. Darkness came with a swift rush as Shan Kar led their little caravan down into the wooded gorge.

The forest was a dark tangle of fir, scruboak and poplar. Beneath it, the brush was tindery and crackling from the long dry season. A mountain-stream brawled noisily along in the night somewhere nearby.

Shan Kar knew the trails. He turned southward and they moved after him, their ponies stumbling in the dark, Lefty Wister swearing in a monotonous whine each time his little steed staggered.

A cold wind whined down from the black mountains on their right. The trees stirred mournfully. Eric Nelson had a sudden strongly claustrophobic awareness of the huge ranges that shut them into this wild and forgotten pocket of the globe.

A wolf howled, a long swelling cry that came from somewhere up in the wooded slopes on the west side of the gorge.

Shan Kar turned in his saddle. "Faster!" he rasped.

Nelson was drawn by some instinct to look up and, through the tracery of branches overhead, saw a dark, winged shape plane swiftly above the gorge. It was high, moving in searching loops and curves.

It screamed, an eagle cry echoing thinly down from the night. Almost at once the distant wolf-cry came again.

Shan Kar abruptly reined in his pony. "They know we're coming! I must try to learn what faces us inside L'Lan!"

He had dismounted. Fumbling under his cloak, he brought out something that glinted oddly in the starlight.

Then Nelson glimpsed what it was — the hoop of platinum with the two quartz disks mounted on it, that odd ornament or instrument which had sparked the treasure-lure of their quest.

"What the—!" Sloan exploded harshly. "If there's danger, we've no time to waste here!"

"Wait!" commanded Shan Kar. "Wait and be silent! All depends on whether I can contact my friends!" He had put the platinum hoop upon his head like a crown. He crouched, his strange headgear glistening vaguely.

Nelson felt incredulous wonder. What was Shan Kar doing with the odd thing? What was it?

Chapter IV

HIDDEN LAND

The moon was rising. As it gleamed above the mountains east of them, its lambent light poured down into the dark forest of the gorge like quicksilver trickling through a sieve.

Shan Kar remained crouched as a pool of the vague light widened around him. The little quartz disks on the headpiece of platinum he wore caught the light and shone brilliantly. The man's olive face was taut, his eyes stared, unseeing, into the darkness.

"What is it? What has happened now?" came Li Kin's anxious voice from the darkness.

Behind the little Chinese, Eric Nelson heard the rattle of the ponies' hoofs on stones and Lefty Wister cursing steadily.

"Cursed native mumbo-jumbo, that's all!" swore Nick Sloan. "Are we going to stand here all night?"

Nelson laid a hand on the other's sleeve. "Wait, Sloan. Shan Kar seems to know what he's doing."

Again a wolf howled, this time a lonely wailing single cry, echoing away, infinitely pregnant with menace.

Shan Kar finally broke his taut immobility, leaping to his feet and jerking the platinum circlet from his head.

"I have talked with my people in Anshan. They warn that a force of the Brotherhood is on its way to cut us off inside the pass, and that their own warriors can't reach us in time to help!"

Talked? Talked how, Nelson wondered swiftly? Had mind somehow spoken to distant mind through the agency of the platinum crown? But how could a people who were desperate to obtain the ordinary weapons of the outer world possess such a super-scientific instrument as that implied?

Shan Kar was continuing urgently. "We must get up through the pass and into L'Lan before they block us! All depends on that!"

Nelson shared the bafflement of the others. In this outlandish situation, they couldn't estimate the true magnitude of perils.

"How many men have the Brotherhood, your enemies, sent out to cut us off?" he demanded.

"Perhaps not many men" answered Shan Kar. "But they have many who are not men. Too many for us."

"More superstition," spat Nick Sloan, disgustedly. "He's trying to tell us there are intelligent beasts coming against us."

Nelson hesitated. "This Brotherhood may use trained beasts as fighters at that. Such a fight would be plenty messy. Especially in a narrow pass."

Again, he was forced to make a quick decision based on information whose sources seemed too fantastic to be credited.

"Get the ponies moving!" he ordered. "Whatever danger may be ahead, we'd be better off to meet it inside the valley than up in that pass."

They started climbing out of the great gorge, Shan Kar leading them up a trail that twisted amid giant boulders and gaunt firs. Soon they glimpsed above them the crack of a pass that split the titanic moonlit wall of the range.

A pulse-quickening sense of expectation spurred Eric Nelson as he helped drag the ponies upward. What lay within that mighty wall of mountains, what guarded answer to the mysteries that seemed to deepen around them hour by hour?

They came up clear of the last trees onto naked rock and shingle with the last lofty rampart of the range looming before them. The pass was a mere narrow crack through that rampart.

It was a place of shadows and shivering cold. The ponies' hoofs clattered on the loose rock as they rode through.

They came out onto an open ledge of moonlight, and Shan Kar leaned in his saddle to gesture ahead.

"L'Lan!"

It looked like a valley of dreams to Eric Nelson. It looked like a place he had visited in some former life and had never quite forgotten.

It was a pear-shaped land fifty miles long, completely walled in by towering ranges that stepped up toward stupendous, snow-crowned peaks at the northern, narrow end of the pear.

The pass at whose outlet they sat their ponies was some twelve miles from the northern end of the valley and nearly a mile above its floor. They looked down into a land silvered by the rising moon.

"Where is the city of your own people?" Nick Sloan demanded brusquely of Shan Kar.

The other pointed southward. "That way — out of sight. But Vruun, the city of the Brotherhood, is there!"

He was pointing north of due west. Eric Nelson followed the direction of his finger.

Nelson had already noticed the big river that flowed down the valley, whose every sprawling loop caught the moon. Now he saw a little cluster of lights beside it near the north end of the valley.

Vruun, city of the mysterious Brotherhood? Nelson strained his eyes. He glimpsed around the lights a mass of vague, glimmering structures that were oddly enlaced by the surrounding forest.

Nelson caught his breath. Unless the light tricked him, Vruun could be like no Asiatic city he had ever seen.

"But what—" he began, turning to Shan Kar.

He didn't finish. The cry that came echoing faintly up out of the great moonlit valley struck him silent.

Hai - ooo!

No human cry was that but one he had heard before in the uplands. The hunting call of wolves, of many wolves.

Hai - ooo! Hai - ooo!

The ponies jumped nervously. Shan Kar's voice rang urgent above the clatter of their hoofs.

"Tark's clan race ahead to cut us off! We must ride fast for Anshan!"

"These pack-ponies can't go fast!" Nick Sloan started to object and was silenced by the grim reply.

"They will!"

They rode pellmell down slippery rock slopes, Shan Kar leading them southward. And forest came darkly up to meet them — black forest of fir and larch and cedar that seemed to clothe much of the great valley.

Each of them led one of the pack-ponies. Nelson noted that the heavily burdened, shaggy little horse he led was nervously running with all its strength.

"The Hairy Ones can go faster than we, but we have a start!" rang Shan Kar's voice from ahead. "All depends upon which of the Brotherhood are out!"

A few minutes later, as though to answer him, a squalling cat-scream drifted from far behind them — a screech of feline anger.

"Quorr and his clawed ones, too!" cried Shan Kar. "And Ei's scouts wing ahead!"

Nelson had already glimpsed the dark shapes of great winged things sliding fast above the forest, only momentarily visible through the tangle of black foliage against the silvered sky.

Ei's folks — eagles of the Brotherhood! Nelson saw three of them sweeping overhead, then circling back.

Abruptly they emerged from the forest onto rolling moonlit plain.

"Those are the lights of Anshan!" Shan Kar called back over the rush of wind. "See!"

Nelson glimpsed a few closely grouped lights far ahead in the moonlit vagueness of the valley. Then they were lost to view as the party galloped down into a declivity of the plain.

Hai - ooo!

Wolf-clan of the Brotherhood shouted to each other as they raced down the valley in pursuit!

Nelson thought, "I should be wondering if all this isn't a crazy dream. Only I know it isn't!"

No dream — no! The great peaks that walled L'Lan loomed lofty and clear in the moonlight. The wind smacked his face with irritating persistence, a twisted stirrup-leather was rubbing his leg raw.

Again the lights of Anshan came into view as they topped another rise in the plain. At the same moment, Lefty Wister uttered a strangled yell. "Blimy, they're—"

It was choked from his lips. Nelson, turning in the saddle, glimpsed the dark wolf-shape that was dragging the Cockney from his frantically bucking pony.

Black leaping forms were all about them, eyes and teeth gleaming in the moonlight. Eagle-wings threshed the night close overhead.

Nelson had his pistol out but his own pony was so frantic with fear that he could not fire. He heard a Dutch curse from Van Voss.

"Off saddle before they pull us down one by one!"

Nelson yelled, making a split-second decision. "Stick together— here!"

He was sliding from the saddle as he spoke, holding his scared pony's reins. A bkck bulk came at him in soundless rush and he triggered his automatic.

The staccato bark of the gun seemed momentarily to startle the dark beast-forms that were now all around them. As the creatures wavered, Van Voss shot the wolf that had dragged Lefty down.

The Cockney staggered up, a forearm slashed and bleeding, mouthing curses. Nick Sloan and Li Kin were already dismounted and Shan Kar was leaping catlike with a short sword from beneath his cloak.

"Help me get the tommy-guns out!" Nick Sloan shouted.

"Look out!" came Li Kin's scared cry. "There are men with them!"

* * *

Eric Nelson was later to remember this as the moment in which he first realized the fantastic otherworldliness of this valley.

For with the dark beasts charging them now came mounted men — men and horses who companioned wolf and tiger and eagle, men who wore queer metal skull-cap helmets and breastplates and wielded swords.

"There is Tark with Barin!" yelled Shan Kar.

Tark? Nelson's heart jumped. The great wolf who had been Nsharra's comrade, who had nearly had his throat out at Yen Shi?

Then he saw the wolf. He glimpsed that massive hairy head plunging forward beside an iron-gray horse on which sat a yelling, sword-wielding young man in helmet and breastplate.

Nelson and Li Kin and the Cockney had their rifles off their saddles and fired at the dark forms charging through the moonlight.

"Kill the men!" Nelson yelled. "The brutes will run off if we get their masters!"

He knew almost as he said it that it was not so, that his incredulity and accustomed habits of thinking were deceiving him.

For these beasts were intelligent. They showed it by the way in which wolf and tiger came on in irregular zigzag leaps to avoid the rifle-fire that was obviously new to them.

In one sense, it was like all the battles in which Eric Nelson had ever engaged. There was the same sense of crazy confusion, the lack of a clear pattern, the feeling of being caught in a random collision of forces in which personal effort counted for nothing.

Then, as always, the fight suddenly crystalized. The youth whom Shan Kar had called Barin was shouting in a high, ringing voice, the other horsemen and the great beasts gathering toward him. "Stand clear!" yelled Sloan, from behind. Nelson and the others jumped aside and Sloan and Van Voss let go with the submachine-guns they had hastily unpacked.

The chattering storm of lead broke full on the human and beast attackers massing for charge. Blood-chilling horse-screams and cat-squalls ripped the din as mounted men and beasts crashed.

"They are beaten — they cannot face your outland weapons!" cried Shan Kar. "See, they flee!"

The beasts and the few horsemen left were dropping back, retreating from that deadly fire. Tiger-squall and wolf-howl rose and fell swiftly. Hoofs drummed the plain. Then Nelson heard a long, clear eagle-scream from far up in the moonlit sky. There followed comparative silence. Shan Kar, sword in hand, was bounding out toward the dark bodies dotting the plain.

"Nelson, what kind of place is this valley?" came Sloan's shaken voice. "Wolves, tigers, eagles—"

"Kuei!" exclaimed Li Kin tremulously. "Shan Kar spoke truth! Brute and men are equal here — at least, in the Brotherhood!"

They heard Shan Kar yell something and plunged forward after him. They were in time to witness an astounding spectacle. Shan Kar, sword in hand, was tensely approaching a mighty, crouching wolf that had been attempting to drag away a man's limp form.

"It's Tark!" cried Shan Kar. "He was trying to drag Barin away!"

Eric Nelson glimpsed the flaring green eyes of the great wolf as it turned its face toward them. It did not snarl, as an ordinary beast would have done. It merely crouched for an instant, seeming to choose its victim swiftly before it sprang.

Nelson, startled, raised his rifle as the wolf launched itself for his throat. Shan Kar yelled at the same instant.

"Don't kill him if you can help it! He's valuable to us alive!"

The wolf would have died despite that cry had Nelson been able to shoot in time. But the spring was too swift for that. Nelson, involuntarily stepping back from the blazing-eyed charge as he raised his gun, tripped and stumbled.

He just glimpsed the terrific swing of Sloan's heavy gun as the other batted with it at the plunging wolf.

He heard the thud of the blow, felt Tark's massive, hairy weight hit him — but limply. Then he scrambled hastily from beneath the motionless body of the stunned wolf.

"We've got Tark alive and Barin, Kree's son, too!" Shan Kar exclaimed. "And we've given the Brotherhood its first taste of our new weapons!"

The man was ablaze with exultation and excitement. Nelson looked down at the two bodies. The wolf still lay senseless, and the youth Barin was bleeding from a crease-wound across the temple.

Nick Sloan looked more shaken than Nelson had ever seen him as he stared at the dead beasts that lay there on the moonlit plain.

"Nelson, these brutes are intelligent!" he panted. "Running with men, fighting as allies of men."

"Kuei!" repeated Li Kin, his saffron face pallid in the silver light. "A valley of witches and devils!"

Shan Kar interrupted. "More of the Brotherhood will be here swiftly. We must ride on fast for Anshan or die here on the plain!"

He was, as he spoke, kneeling to lash hide thongs securely about the feet of the stunned wolf.

Tark, the wolf, stirred as Shan Kar finished the task. The green eyes of the great beast flickered open. Then, seeing Shan Kar binding the youth, Barin, the wolfs lips writhed away back from great fangs in a soundless snarl

Shan Kar finished binding the youth, turned and laughed full in the face of the wolf.

"Tark the mighty, trapped like a tame outland dog!" He jeered at the great beast. "Did Kree send you to guard his stripling son? A potent guardian!"

The wolf made no sound, but his green eyes blazed an intelligent hatred of his mocker that made Eric Nelson's skin crawl.

"Riders are coming from the south!" Nick Sloan shouted suddenly. "Get ready!"

Chapter V

WOLF HATRED

Nelson and the others raised their weapons as a dull clatter of many hoofs grew swiftly louder.

"Wait!" cried Shan Kar. "They are my own people from Anshan! Do not shoot!"

In the moonlight, Nelson presently made out a band of horsemen galloping toward them from the south. They wore armor much like that of their recent attackers, skullcap helmets and breastplates of metal. Swords gleamed in the moon. For a moment, Nelson thought that the new-come horsemen would ride right onto them.

But they pulled up sharply. A burly, bearlike warrior tumbled from his steed and strode toward San Kar with noisy greetings. Shan Kar, after brief colloquy, called to Eric Nelson and the others.

"Hoik and these warriors came out to escort us to Anshan. But we mustn't delay. The scouts of the Winged Ones will have the whole Brotherhood down on us if we do."

Nelson heard the warriors exchanging fierce exultant words. Their dialect was not Tibetan but so much akin to that ancient tongue that he could catch most of the phrases.

"— Kree's son himself and the Hairy One!" the bearlike Hoik was shouting. "We'll make the Brotherhood squirm now!"

Nelson found Lefty Wister bleeding from a slash in his forearm but not badly injured. The little Cockney was shaken.

"They weren't wolves!" he panted. "They were men that can change like the old stories! They must be that!"

The two prisoners — the bound, senseless youth and the wolf — had already been lifted and slung across horses by the warriors of Hoik, two of whom were to ride double.

"Why don't you just kill them?" Lefty demanded viciously of Shan Kar.

The other shook his head peremptorily. "No, these two captives are worth much to us Humanites! We take them to Anshan! Mount quickly, for we ride!"

* * *

Nelson's thoughts drummed in unison with the thudding of hoofs as they galloped with Shan Kar and Hoik's warriors across the rolling moonlit plain. His mind was bewildered, trying to reconcile this fantastic valley with the ordinary world.

L'Lan was not of that world. That was sure. This hidden pocket of Earth held a way of life of man and beast unheard of on the rest of the planet. Here reigned an ancient and unearthly way of life — one even now moving toward a climax of conflict within itself.

"Captain Nelson, to think it is all true!" came Li Kin's exclamation. "L'Lan, the legendary valley of the Brotherhood, unchanged!"

"Perish old legends!" Nelson thought. There was some normal explanation for all this. There must be.

The helmeted, sword-armed warriors who rode around him were like no ordinary Asiatic tribesmen, but Asia was vast and held queer racial survivals in its hidden places. The uncanny community of men and beasts here surely had other explanation than that the beasts were as intelligent as the men.

"Anshan!" called Shan Kar, from where he rode at the head of the mounted band.

Nelson perceived that they were riding down a gentle dope of the moonlit plain toward a city whose lights glimmered near the shore of the valley L'Lan's big woods-bordered river.

He didn't like the way the city looked in the moonlight. It was not large, an oval stretching along the river less than a mile. But it looked so strange, too much like the disturbing impression he had obtained in his vague glimpse of distant Vruun.

It was a city interpenetrated by forest, by the low, dark woods that bordered the river. The forest came into Anshan as though by right, was woven into its design in wide windings of dense foliage.

"What kind of place is this?" demanded Nick Sloan, startled. "Those domes and towers are black glass!"

Black glass? It could not be that, surely. Yet every surface shimmered blackly and brilliantly in the moon, as though vitreous.

Like big bubbles of glittering jet, the spherical buildings loomed above the enlacing foliage. The round, slim towers, with queer openings and balconies at their tops, pointed skyward like ebony fingers.

Lights within the city were reflected by a thousand curving surfaces of glass, were splintered and shattered into broken beams and sparkles.

"This place doesn't belong on Earth at all!" Li Kin exclaimed.

Eric Nelson realized that this was what upset him so badly. It was not merely the presence of a big unknown city in this hidden corner of Asia. There were many such.

It was the fact that the city Anshan matched in strangeness the strange beast-and-human folk of the valley L'Lan, that it bulked and glittered here like a city fallen to earth from another, alien planet.

They rode through the enlacing, whispering woods into the bubble-city. And Eric Nelson realized then that this city was old.

He had seen Angkor brooding in its jungles and the thousand towers of Pagan lonesome against the Burmese sky. But this place, though not a ruin, looked infinitely more ancient.

It was the weirdness of the wide windings of forest which interlaced the city that made Anshan seem older than human history. No completely human city had ever been so built. Even aside from the dark silent forest-ways within it, the city was too big for the number of its people. Few people were in its streets, few lights glimmered from the doorways of the bubble-buildings.

Yet men and women, clad alike in silken jackets and trousers, except for a few armed warriors like those they rode with, ran toward their clattering troop. Shan Kar gave them a proud wave of his hand.

"Shan Kar has returned with the outlanders and their weapons!" ran an excited cry.

"I don't get it!" Nick Sloan said, his harsh voice puzzled. "A big city like this — yet they're crazy over a few machine-guns!"

They rode up toward a complex of black, bubble-like buildings surrounded by a wide belt of tall trees, into which all the strange dark forest-windings of the city seemed to lead. The warrior Hoik and his men, with their two captives, went on around the buildings. But Shan Kar drew rein and dismounted.

"You need not talk with me and the other Humanite leaders until morning," he told Nelson. "You must be tired."

Tired? Nelson had not realized the full depth of his weariness until he dismounted. Bone-crushing fatigue made him reel. But, as always, the responsibilities of leadership stiffened him.

"You'll have our packs of weapons unloaded?" he said to Shan Kar. "They must remain with us, of course."

Shan Kar's face and voice were smooth. "There is no need. They will be well guarded."

"Yes," Nelson nodded stolidly. "By us. In unskilled hands they would be dangerous."

The other's eyes narrowed but he shrugged. He called, and armored warriors appeared and picked up the heavy packs. They carried them after Shan Kar and the five outlanders, into the building.

They went through a big open doorway, like that of a cathedral, into a great entrance hall. It was broad and high-arched, a dusky, empty immensity ill-lit by torches of resinous wood that flamed in rude sockets hacked in the walls.

Torches in this shimmering lofty hall of faery-like black glass? The sight of them startled Eric Nelson. It was like finding tallow candles in a modern New York apartment.

He noted other incongruities as they were led through corridors to a suite of small rooms. Dust clung to the floors everywhere. And in the rooms assigned them were wooden chairs and bedframes, clean in workmanship but primitive compared to the palace itself.

Shan Kar, as the grunting warriors piled up the heavy packs and left, told them, "Food will be brought soon. You will want to sleep. In the morning we will talk."

Nick Sloan's flat voice broke in. "Yes, in the morning we will talk-about platinum."

The other's face tightened a little, but he nodded. "That and other things." He went out, and Nick Sloan stared after him with suspicion hardening his flat brown face.

He muttered, "He's too cursed cagey to suit me. I've an idea there's a joker in his offer."

Eric Nelson almost envied Sloan's hard singleness of purpose. The increasingly disturbing mystery of this strange valley of men and beasts had not deviated the other a hair from his goal. Lack of imagination and of sympathy served Sloan well.

A frightened-looking olive-skinned girl in silk brought them food in earthenware bowls and platters-coarse wheaten cakes, a mush of cooked vegetables and a jar of yellow wine.

Nelson drank heavily. Then fatigue crushed him down like a giant, gentle hand onto one of the low beds.

Time unreeled backwards as his tired brain sank into darkness. L'Lan was a dream and ten years of Asia were a dream and he was back in his old slant-walled bedroom under the eaves of an Ohio farmhouse.

* * *

He did not awaken until sunlight splashed his face. The others were waking, rubbing bleared eyes and unshaven faces, looking wonderingly around the black, glassy rooms.

The bearlike warrior captain, Hoik, came in as they finished breakfast. He said curtly, "If you're ready to come we'll talk now."

"Talk with whom?" Eric Nelson demanded. "Who, exactly, runs things here?"

Hoik shrugged big shoulders. "We Humanites are not a government yet. We're a faction that seceded from the rest of L'Lan. Shan Kar and I and Diril and old Jurnak have been the leaders."

The two called Diril and Jurnak, a thoughtful-looking younger man and a bearded oldster, were waiting for them outside the room and went with them through the curving glass corridors.

The place was all of black glass. But not ordinary glass. That, Nelson knew, could not have supported such stresses and strains. This city was of an unknown material. A miracle-city, a city that might have come from another planet, hidden here in deepest Asia and inhabited by a semi-civilized people! It didn't make sense.

Hoik paused, Nelson and the others with him, at the entrance of a spacious hall like the heart of a huge black pearl. But here too dust dimmed the gracious curves, the furniture was primitive.

"What's Shan Kar doing?" demanded Nick Sloan as they looked into the hall.

"He's still talking with Tark," said Hoik.

Eric Nelson felt a shock of astonishment as he looked at the strange scene in the dusty glimmering glass hall.

Near the far wall of the room, secured by a heavy throat-chain to a massive staple in the wall, crouched the giant wolf Tark. Shan Kar sat in front of the wolf, looking silently down into the brooding, smoldering green eyes of the beast.

"Talking? But no one is saying anything!" exclaimed Lefty Wister, his thin face puckered puzzledly.

"It's supposed to be telepathy, I guess," said Sloan, jeering. "The same as he claimed to use with that eagle."

Shan Kar heard and got up and came toward them. He looked at them with a flash of impatience.

"You still don't believe? In spite of your powerful weapons you outlanders have things to learn."

He spoke to the younger Humanite leader. "Get thought-crowns for them, Diril."

Diril went out of the room and came back with five of the ancient-looking platinum circlets, each one mounted with two quartz disks.

Shan Kar handed them to Nelson and his comrades. "Put them on. Then you can hear."

Nelson hesitated and Li Kin handled his circlet in obvious nervous fright.

"They won't hurt you," said Shan Kar sardonically. "We of L'Lan do not need them for talk like this. Our minds and the beasts' can converse easily.

"But at a distance these thought-crowns our forefathers made let us hear thought more loudly. They should enable your minds to hear."

They put on the platinum crowns, looking oddly like hard-faced saints in haloes.

"Well, can you hear now?" asked Shan Kar.

Eric Nelson was startled by realization that Shan Kar's lips had not moved, that he had not spoken that question.

"Blimy, it works!" whispered Lefty Wister, with awe. "You can hear the blighter think!"

"Only when the thought is projected by an effort of will," the Humanite assured. "You can't pick up a man's inner mental reverie."

"These crowns must be amplifiers-telepathic amplifiers," Nelson muttered. "The scientists say telepathy is a transmission of electric thought-waves and I suppose the right instrument could set up the power. But how did these people get such instruments?"

"The things are platinum!" said Nick Sloan avidly in English. "The first platinum we've seen here. Try to find out where they keep the stuff, Nelson!"

That Shan Kar heard Sloan's thought was proved by his quick answer. "We shall talk later of the metal you want. Now I want you to speak to Tark."

The great green eyes of the wolf had a cold flare in them as they steadily met Nelson's gaze. Here was no blind brute fury, but unmistakable intelligence, poise and hatred.

Yet this was a wolf. The white fangs behind those half-drawn lips had almost had his throat out that night in Yen Shi. The great body, crouched on the chain, was the hairy body of a wild beast.

"Tell him," said Shan Kar to Nelson, "how many guns you've brought. He knows their power. He saw them in action in the outworld."

Again, it took Nelson a moment to realize that Shan Kar had spoken telepathically and not vocally.

The green wolf-eyes flashed from Nelson to Shan Kar, and back again. Then Nelson heard the oddly fibred, oddly husky mental voice of Tark, as he had heard it in sleep that first night weeks ago.

"I am your prisoner," was the wolf's thought. "You're going to kill me. Why try to impress me now?"

"Because," Shan Kar answered quickly, "we may not kill you, Tark."

"Mercy from a Humanite?" jeered Tark. "Ice from the sun, warmth from the snow, good hunting from the storm!"

Nelson's skin crawled, with an uncanny feeling that matched the horror in Li Kin's gasping exclamation behind him. The wolf was speaking, was jeering, even though those mighty jaws did not part. Brain speaking to brain, wolf brain to human brain, without need of the medium of vocal sound!

"We have you and Kree's son," Shan Kar reminded. "But you both might live. We could make a bargain, Tark."

"A bargain?" cried Tark's thought. "Such a bargain as you've offered these ignorant outlanders, promising them pay you can't give?"

"What's that?" cried Sloan, aloud. The man instantly forgot the incredulous amazement that had held him speechless till now and spoke directly to the wolf. "What do you mean he can't pay us?"

"Keep silent!" flared Shan Kar to the animal. "Hoik, have the guard take Tark out!"

"Just a minute," said Eric Nelson sharply. "What he says concerns us. I intend to know what he means."

A soundless burst of snarling lupine mirth broke upon Nelson's mind. Tark's green eyes flared with pure pleasure. "You overreached yourself when you had them put the thought-crowns on, Shan Kar!" he taunted. "You forgot that then I could hear their meaning too — and overhear that you'd promised them the gray metal!"

Shan Kar's hand gripped the hilt of his sword as he rose and glared in rage at the wolf.

Nelson, all thought of the scene's strangeness swept away by sudden suspicion, spoke directly to Tark.

"You mean — there is no gray metal here?"

Tark's eyes flickered. "There is gray metal here. But it is all in one place where you can't reach it — the Cavern of Creation."

"What's that?" demanded Nick Sloan, eyes narrowed.

"It is a forbidden place of our Brotherhood," Tark answered. "It is the place whence intelligent life first issued onto the face of Earth, long ago. And it lies at the northern end of the valley L'Lan."

Eric Nelson instantly caught at the salient point in the answer. "At the northern end of the valley? Then it's beyond Vruun?"

The wolfs thought answered like a snap of jaws. "It is. Which means you can't reach it!"

Chapter VI

DARING PLAN

Nick Sloan, his eyes flaring with suspicion, swung around on Shan Kar. "Is that true?"

Shan Kar shrugged. "It's true that the platinum is all at the north end of L'Lan."

"You said you had platinum here, and would give us all we wanted for our help!" accused Sloan harshly.

"I said there was plenty of it in L'Lan and there is," retorted the Humanite. "But you can't get near it until the Brotherhood is conquered. When we win you'll get your pay."

"A nice neat little double-cross," raged Sloan.

"Only in case you planned to deceive us" answered Shan Kar pointedly.

Eric Nelson realized the other's cleverness. Shan Kar, obviously mistrusting their motives, had a foolproof defense. They had to win his fight before they could even reach the platinum reward.

Nelson spoke curtly. "Take it easy, Sloan. If the stuff is here we can get it after the job is done."

The oddly husky thought of the wolf Tark interrupted, startling them. The wolf had crouched, listening intently.

"You're still being deceived, outlanders! Not only the clans of the Brotherhood bar the way to the Cavern of Creation. Inside it is the terrible barrier of the cold fire, which you can never pass!"

"Cold fire? What does he mean by that?" Nelson demanded.

"Do not listen to Tark!" Shan Kar flashed. He swung toward the warrior-guards. "Take the Hairy One back to his prison!"

Deftly one of the warriors looped another chain around Tark's throat. Then, with swords drawn, they led him out of the hall. The wolf went quietly but with a backward glance of blazing green eyes.

"It's time for a showdown," Eric Nelson said sharply to Shan Kar. "We've got to have the facts if we're to fight for you."

"You shall have them," Shan Kar answered coolly. "But you have been so incredulous that I had to prove to you first that the higher animals of this valley are intelligent races. You'll grant that now?"

Nelson reluctantly nodded. "There doesn't seem much doubt of that any more."

"But how can they be intelligent?" Nick Sloan demanded. "It just doesn't make sense."

Shan Kar motioned them to the massive chairs around the table. Hoik and the other two Humanite leaders also sat but Shan Kar himself remained standing as he talked.

"Legend is all we have of the remote past here in L'Lan. Legend says that the ancients, our forefathers, were far greater than we, that we lost all their knowledge except for a few relics like the thought-crowns.

"Now we Humanites believe that our forefathers, the ancients, had such knowledge and power that they were able somehow to develop the animals of this valley into intelligent thinking beasts!"

"It does seem the only possible explanation, fantastic as it is," Nelson muttered.

"However it was done," Shan Kar went on, "the fact remains that in this valley the four higher beast-races, the wolf and tiger and horse and eagle, are in some ways the mental equals of man. And those four clans claim their intelligence entitles them to absolute equality with the human race.

"In fact, they even claim that their races and the human race were created equal in intelligence, that in the dawn of time they issued equally from the Cavern of Creation!"

Nick Sloan said sharply, "This Cavern of Creation is where the platinum is?"

Shan Kar nodded somberly. "It's in the extreme north end of the valley. We know it contains metal relics left by the ancients. But it's difficult to enter because of certain strange dangers. Only the hereditary Guardian of the Brotherhood knows how to enter it safely.

"All the past Guardians, like Kree, the present one, have woven myth around that cavern. They've claimed that in it, long ago, both the human and the higher beast-races were created equal. And they've claimed to be warders of terrible powers left there by the ancients.

The Humanite went on broodingly, his face dark with rankling memory.

"They've kept that myth of the primal Brotherhood of man and beast alive here for ages. But in time we learned that it is not so in the outer world, that there man rightfully rules the animals.

"So we tried to claim for us humans the rightful dominant position here too. We didn't want to tyrannize the intelligent beasts. But we did believe that the governing authority should be in human hands.

"A third of the people joined us. But the other two-thirds, besotted by old myths, adhered to the Brotherhood. Finally we Humanites seceded from the Brotherhood and seized this city, Anshan. Here man and beast are not equal as they are in Vruun!"

Eric Nelson felt the shock of astonishment from the picture of L'Lan that had just been unfolded to them. A hidden valley guarding the relics of a once-mighty civilization, a valley in which beast-races claimed equality with man and in which a human minority was trying to right that!

"It seems incredible," he said, frowning, "that men and women would concede animals, even intelligent animals, equality!"

"Of course it seems so to you of the normal outer world!" Shan Kar exclaimed. "But the people here who follow Kree and the Brotherhood persist in blind belief in the lying legends."

All the passion of the man flamed into his eyes and voice as he continued with fanatic intensity.

"The equality of the Brotherhood is a mere sham that won't endure. As the beast-races learn more they'll aspire to rule man here! And some victorious beast-clan will, unless we prevent it.

"That's why we Humanites seceded from the Brotherhood and have brought the threat of civil war to L'Lan! That's why, since we're so badly outnumbered, I went into the outer world for weapons and fighters who could restore the balance of power for us!"

Nelson felt a strong sympathy with Shan Kar's burning passion. There was something repellent in the possibility he depicted. Beast-races demanding equality with men, aspiring to dominance over men! All his instincts rebelled against the idea.

"It gives me the creeps!" muttered Lefty Wister. "You ought to kill all the brutes."

Shan Kar looked a little shocked at that. "We don't want to destroy the beast-clans. It's simply that they must learn the Brotherhood is a myth, that men are best fitted to govern."

Nick Sloan's hard practical mind swung them back to immediate problems. "We still don't know the strategic setup in this valley," he rapped. "How much of the valley do you Humanites hold?"

Hoik rumbled answer. "Only the southern quarter of the valley, including this city Anshan and a few smaller places."

Shan Kar added, "Vruun is the great metropolis of the Brotherhood, humans and beast-clans alike. So far there's been armed truce between them and us Humanites. But the fight last night means war!

"Kree must have suspected my purpose in going to the outer world, and sent his daughter Nsharra with Tark and Hatha and Ei to block me. They failed and the Brotherhood failed again last night. But our capture of Tark and Kree's son begins open conflict now."

Eric Nelson asked quick questions. The answers of the Humanite leaders gave him a discouraging picture. The Humanites, with their fanatic desire to establish human authority, were a minority in the valley. They could not put more than two thousand warriors into the field.

"The Brotherhood has twice that many men and five times that many intelligent beasts of the clans," Shan Kar admitted.

"Pretty stiff odds — but we hold a joker in our machine-guns and grenades," said Nick Sloan.

Nelson nodded. "If there are only swords and bows and spears and the claws and fangs of the brutes against us we should be able to discount the advantage of numbers."

He continued decisively. "We ought to hit them with everything we've got before they get used to our new weapons — smash hard at the heart of this Brotherhood, at Vruun."

Sloan voiced agreement. But the big warrior Hoik shook his head doubtfully.

"Our warriors might not follow you to a direct attack on Vruun. They're still afraid of Kree."

"For heaven's sake, why?" demanded Nick Sloan disgustedly.

Shan Kar explained. "The Guardian of the Brotherhood, as I told you, is reputed to be warder of terrible powers left by the ancients in the Cavern of Creation. That's mostly myth put out by the Guardians during the ages, of course!"

The Humanite paused. "Yet the Guardian does have a few queer powers. He's known to have effected some terrible transformations, to punish those who transgressed the Brotherhood. That's left such a memory of horror in L'Lan that even our own fervent followers might hesitate to attack Kree's city directly."

Nelson exploded. "How can we lead a campaign for you when your own people are poisoned by superstition?"

"Let's pull out of this creepy place," snarled the Cockney.

"Take it easy, you two!" said Nick Sloan. "With a fortune here for the taking, we're not letting a few difficulties rob us of it."

Shan Kar interrupted. "There's one quick way to overcome that difficulty and that's to capture Kree and Nsharra! That would dismay the Brotherhood and remove our own people's lingering doubts."

"Capture them?" asked Van Voss, his colorless, expressionless eyes on the Humanite. "Why not just kill them?"

"That's out!" snapped Nelson. "We're not murderers."

"And killing them would so infuriate the Brotherhood that they'd never surrender," added Shan Kar.

Sloan nodded. "Besides, you said the old Guardian and his daughter know the safe way into that cavern where the platinum is. No, we don't want to kill them."

Shan Kar continued rapidly, "A few of us, only a handful, could penetrate Vruun secretly by night and seize Kree and Nsharra. We could make Tark himself lead us secretly and safely into the city!"

"You mean that the wolf will do that if we threaten to kill him?" Li Kin asked, his spectacled eyes wondering.

Shan Kar laughed mirthlessly. "The Hairy One isn't afraid of death. But he doesn't want us to kill Barin, the Guardian's son.

"We'll offer him Barin's life if he guides us into Vruun, supposedly to liberate a Humanite prisoner. Tark may accept."

"It sounds to me like a cursedly complicated and dangerous plan," Sloan commented bluntly.

"But if it succeeded, it would clear the way for a quick blitz against the whole Brotherhood," Nelson said thoughtfully. "I'll lead the attempt if the wolf can be talked into guiding us."

"Have the guards bring Tark back in," Shan Kar told Diril.

The great wolf stalked back into the black hall, his chains held carefully taut by the sword-armed guards who walked on either side of him.

Tark swept them with his gaze. Eric Nelson felt a chill, uncanny shock in meeting those eyes that were like pools of cold green fire.

Shan Kar and the Humanites apparently found nothing strange in the scene. They were too accustomed to contact and speech with the intelligent beasts of the Brotherhood.

"You must choose now whether young Barin is to live or die," Shan Kar told Tark.

His lips did not move, Nelson saw. He was thinking to the wolf again, and Nelson and his companions were picking up that thought through their thought-crowns. Tark's lips writhed back from great white fangs in a soundless snarl. His answering thought came fiercely. "A trick! You want nothing more than to kill both Barin and myself!"

"That is quite true," Shan Kar coolly agreed. "But even more than to kill you two we want something else."

His thought raced on. "Hoik's brother, Jhanon, is a prisoner in Vruun, as you know. We wish to rescue him. We'll give yours and Barin's lives for his freedom."

" I have not authority to release Jhanon," Tark retorted. "Only the Guardian can do that."

"But you could guide a few of us secretly into Vruun, so we could release Jhanon ourselves," pressed Shan Kar. "Do so, and Barin goes free."

Tark's thought came after a pause. "If I did that it would be a direct disobedience of the Guardian's orders."

"But if you don't, the Guardian's son will die!" Shan Kar threatened. "Nsharra sent you to watch over her brother, didn't she? And you failed, Tark! How will you face her and report your failure?"

Tark's green eyes narrowed. The wolf looked from one to the other of them, then back to Shan Kar.

"You are right," his telepathic answer came finally. "I will be committing a minor act of treachery against the Brotherhood, but I must do it to prevent a worse thing happening."

"Then this very night we go to Vruun!" Shan Kar said swiftly. He pointed to Nelson. "He and one of his comrades go with us, Tark."

Tark's eyes flickered back to Nelson's face, and the green orbs were inscrutable in expression.

"That is well," he answered. "I promise to get you secretly and safely into Vruun."

When the guards had taken the great wolf away Nelson expressed his satisfaction. "So far, so good! With the wolf guiding us, we've a strong chance of getting hold of Kree and the girl."

Shan Kar looked at him with an ironical smile. "You still underestimate Tark's resolution and cunning. He knows that it's Kree and Nsharra we're really going after. He figures to lead us inside Vruun and then suddenly turn on us and give the alarm."

"Then why are you going in there with him, if you think that?" exclaimed Sloan.

Shan Kar's smile hardened. "Because, if all goes well, we'll outguess Tark. Once inside Vruun, we'll overpower him before he can betray us!"

Chapter VII

SECRET MISSION

Night brooded over Anshan, a velvety darkness that enwrapped the city's glassy towers and domes. Like glimmering ghost-bubbles the fairy spherical structures caught and imaged the thousand stars that burned in the blue-black sky.

Nelson turned from the open window out which he had been gazing and looked across the torchlit room at the others.

"The moon won't be up for hours, and that's good. With luck we can get in and out of Vrunn before it rises."

"I wish that you were not going," murmured Li Kin, his bespectacled face troubled.

Lefty Wister had elected to accompany Nelson. He sat checking the service automatics which Nelson had deemed more suitable than submachine-guns for this stealthy attempt. Van Voss sat watching with his pale, expressionless eyes.

Nelson shrugged. "It's risky but no more so than some of the things we pulled for old Yu Chi Chan. And if we can capture Kree and his daughter we have a chance to clean up this business pronto."

Nick Sloan nodded agreement. "But you watch yourself, Nelson. That cursed thinking wolf will have your heart out if he gets the jump on you."

"I want to be the one to kill that brute whenever the time comes!" Lefty said venomously. The little Cockney had chosen to be the one to accompany Nelson despite the fact that of them all he had the most superstitious horror of the intelligent animals. It was almost as though he was drawn on the dangerous mission by a fascination of hate.

Shan Kar and young Diril entered the room in full warrior dress of helmet, breastplate and sword-belt.

The Humanite's olive face was flushed with excitement, his black eyes eager. He held two of the thought-crowns in his hand.

"You're ready?" he said to Nelson. "Then we'll get Tark. But first put on the thought-crowns — you two must wear them constantly."

They went out and down the torchlit corridors with him, Li Kin looking mournfully after them from the doorway. Shan Kar led them through the vaulted ways of the building to a torchlit passage that had sentries posted in it. The doors here had massive wooden bars, set in crude, heavy metal hooks. This row of rooms had been converted thus into a prison-wing.

Eric Nelson was struck again by the contrast between the primitive ways of the present inhabitants of L'Lan and the marvelous, alien beauty and splendor of the ancient cities they inhabited. Truly these people had lost the knowledge of their ancient forebears!

Shan Kar unbarred and opened a door. The great wolf Tark rose soundlessly inside, and looked at them with inscrutable green eyes. Again, Nelson had the eery experience of hearing the wolf's projected thought through the instrument of ancient science that he wore upon his head.

"Before I go, I must see Barin," came Tark's thought.

"No!" said Shan Kar instantly.

"Then I do not go!" flashed the wolf. "For how am I to know but what you've killed him already?"

Shan Kar hesitated. "Very well. You can see him. But you're not to plot with him, Tark!"

The wolf trotted soundlessly beside them as they went down the corridor to the farthest barred door. Nelson noticed that Lefty Wister never took his eyes off the beast. The Cockney's pinched face glared his fear and hatred.

Barin leaped up from his wooden cot when Shan Kar opened the door. The youth still had a raw wound in his forehead, but seemed to have otherwise recovered.

Nelson saw his likeness to Nsharra — the same highbred, handsome features, the same intense passion flashing in his dark eyes.

"Betrayer of the Brotherhood!" Barin spat at Shan Kar. "Blasphemer against the law!"

He struck fire from Shan Kar. The latter's deep fanatic intensity of purpose boiled instantly to the surface.

"Your father's law — law of the lying Guardians of all the ages, who have told our people that beasts should rank with men!"

The wolf Tark was gazing fixedly at Barin and Nelson heard his thought. "Barin, if all goes well, you will soon be free. Wait quietly."

Barin glanced swiftly at the wolf, then suspiciously at Nelson and the Cockney.

"You plan something with these outlanders? Tark, I will not—"

"Wait quietly!" repeated the wolf, harshly commanding.

"No more!" cut in Shan Kar. The Humanite brusquely pushed them back, closed and barred the door.

It seemed to Eric Nelson that some swift glance of understanding had passed between Barin and Tark. A secret signal? Yet Tark went quietly enough with them back through the corridors. They emerged into the darkness of a court where warriors waited with a half-dozen horses.

"We take two extra horses for remounts," Shan Kar said.

The wolf ventured no comment. But Nelson wondered if he guessed that the extra mounts were intended for Kree and Nsharra.

The next instant it was swept from his mind by a disturbing shock. The horses tossed their heads excitedly against their cruel-bitted bridles and uttered eager thoughts that sounded in Nelson's brain.

"It's the Hairy One!" they cried. "Tark!"

It shook Nelson. And Lefty uttered a smothered oath.

"These horses of yours are talking to the bloody wolf!" cried the Cockney to Shan Kar.

Shan Kar answered curtly. "All the clans in this valley are intelligent. These Hoofed Ones are our prisoners of war."

"Slaves, say rather!" flashed the passionate thought of the golden mare in the forefront. "Slaves, beaten into beasts of burden by the Humanites! Tark, do they know this in Vruun?"

The thought of the wolf came pregnant with hate and menace. "We knew many of Hatha's clan were captured, but did not know the Humanites dared enslave you thus, brothers!"

A bay stallion, ears flattened and eyes rolling, reared up despite the saw-edged bit that cut his mouth.

"Tark, have you come to free us? By the Cavern, speak but a word and we fight and die here now!"

"My warriors can kill you all swiftly — and then Barin dies!" Shan Kar warned the wolf.

"Wait, brothers!" the wolf's thought ordered the rearing, excited horses. "Wait and go quietly with us now — it is for the good of the Brotherhood."

Unearthly, that thought-colloquy of wolf and horses, to Eric Nelson! He was surely deluding himself, he thought — his mind could not actually be hearing that swift interchange of passionate thought—

But the rearing horses quieted, and from them came quick answer. "We obey, Tark! If it is for the Brotherhood!"

Shan Kar spoke to Nelson and the Cockney. "Mount now — and fear nothing. These Hoofed Ones have learned their masters!"

It gave Nelson a creepy feeling to swing into the rude saddle of the golden mare and to realize that his mount was intelligently aware of him, hating him, wanting to kill him.

They rode out of the court and on out through the dark silent windings of forest that enlaced Anshan. Tark ran silently, a black shadow, beside Shan Kar's steed.

Then they were out on the rolling plain, under a sky of magnificent stars against whose sparkling splendor the lofty peaks around L'Lan towered solemn and distant!

"Now lead the way, Tark, and remember that if you lead us wrongly Barin dies!"

The great wolf noiselessly slid ahead of their little mounted party. He trotted almost due north across the plain.

"Keep close behind me," his thought came back. "Obey instantly when I direct you."

Wind, cold from the distant peaks, buffeted Eric Nelson's face as the mare loped steadily. Lefty Wister bucketed along just behind, Diril bringing up the rear with the two spare horses.

The wolf veered constantly to keep always as near as possible to the clumps of trees that dotted the plain. Soon Nelson learned the reason.

Tark whirled, just ahead of them, and his eyes flashed green light as his sharp thought came back to them. "Into the trees! Quickly!"

There was a clump of birch close ahead. They spurred into the little grove. There Shan Kar turned in his saddle toward the wolf, his thought suspicious and menacing.

"Is this a trick? If it is, Tark—"

"Quiet!" commanded the wolf. "Scouts are coming."

They came as three gliding shadows up against the stars. Nelson saw they were eagles winging high in the darkness, soundless as flying clouds, sweeping on toward Anshan.

"Now we can go on," the wolf told them a minute later. "The Winged Ones have passed."

"What are they doing here?" Shan Kar asked harshly. "Going to watch Anshan," was the curt answer of Tark.

They rode on, veering to keep near the infrequent tree-clumps, until the solid wall of the forest loomed up before them.

The forest was like a dark maw gaping for them. The thought of the intelligent, hostile beasts that roamed its ways made it seem a black witch-wood to Nelson. He didn't want to go into it.

Neither did Lefty Wister. The Cockney's voice snarled in the dimness beside Nelson. "If that blasted wolf has got others waiting for us in there—"

It seemed pitch-dark beneath the trees at first. Then Nelson's eyes became more accustomed to the deeper obscurity. He looked up and saw tall trunks and graceful boughs against the stars, recognized the outlines of larch and cedar and fir.

The forest smelled dry. The rainless months had parched it so that each twig the horses stepped on snapped and broke. Tark was a darker shadow in the darkness, leading the way between the trees by occasional back-glances of luminous green eyes.

"Why don't we follow the river to Vruun?" Shan Kar demanded. "It would be the clearest way."

"To discovery," Tark's thought retorted harshly. "Quorr's clan are the greatest danger. The Clawed Ones roam those river-brakes by night."

Clawed Ones? He meant the tigers, Nelson realized. His skin crawled at the thought of meeting those striped killers here.

"No more thoughts-speech unless I speak first!" Tark continued peremptorily. "Your danger deepens with each mile we traverse now."

The horses were jumpy as they went on through the forest, up ridges, through brushy valleys. The mare quivered under Nelson.

Excitement? He wondered They must know they were going toward Vruun. Was that why they were so jumpy? It made Nelson feel a sudden pity for them. These were not the dumb beasts of the outer world. These horses were intelligent as men. And to be captured, enslaved, broken from their complete freedom into beasts of burden—

He thrust such thoughts impatiently from his mind. He was letting the influences of this fantastic valley affect him. Animals were animals, no matter if they could speak telepathically and think—

They had been traveling for more than an hour when a yapping wolf-call from west of them was answered by a low coughing roar from the direction of the river. Tark stopped and came back to them. The wolf's eyes glared up at them.

"We must leave the Hoofed Ones here. We can't trust them not to betray us if we pass others of the Clans."

Instantly from the horses came thoughts of passionate protest. "Tark, we thought you took us to Vruun! Are you not going to free us?"

"Brothers, I cannot!" was the wolf's answer. "For the good of the Brotherhood you must remain captive a while longer."

A moment of silence followed and then Eric Nelson heard the slow thought of their reply. "We trust you, Tark. We will obey."

Nelson dismounted. Shan Kar was speaking swiftly to young Diril.

"You'll wait here with the Hoofed Ones. Slit their throats if they try to send a single thought out."

"They will not!" the wolf flared. "Now follow me and move as silently as you can."

They were at the crest of a wooded ridge. The wolf led northward along this crest, pausing often to sniff the wind. Again, they heard wolf-cries from the west but there was no answer this time. Suddenly Tark whirled, his thought urgent.

"One of the Clawed Ones comes this way! Lie still and I will try to turn him back before he winds you!"

Nelson followed Shan Kar's example and crouched in high ferns. He pulled Lefty down after him as the bewildered Cockney drew his gun. Tark bounded ahead. Nelson glimpsed him stopping in a little patch of starlight between two dead trees ahead.

Tark uttered a low, barking call, looking toward the east. Instantly a coughing grunt answered. A minute later, a big striped beast glided into the patch of starlight — a tiger whose size dwarfed Tark. Nelson's mind clearly caught the swift interchange of thought between the two nearby beasts.

"Tark! Tark of the Hairy Ones, free in the forests! All the Clans have thought you dead or prisoner in Anshan!"

"I escaped, Grih! But Barin is still prisoner in Anshan."

"Not for long, Hairy One! The Guardian gathers the Clans! Word has flown through all the valley that war with the Humanites begins!"

The wolf's thoughts raced. "Grih, you can help me! Hasten you to the forest-edge above Anshan and watch if the Humanites trail me!"

Fiercely throbbed the striped beast's answer. "I go at once! If they come I shall send word by Ei's folk! Speed you to Vruun, brother!"

Nelson saw the tiger whirl and melt away in the dark forest, heading southeastward down the wooded slope. He lowered the gun he'd kept leveled as Tark came loping back to them. "There can be no delay now! We must hurry!"

"So Kree gathers the Clans for war?" Shan Kar said fiercely. "So be it! They shall learn their masters when they come against men!"

The wolf made no answer but his eyes flared brilliantly as he turned to lead on.

Nelson, aware of the vital necessity of keeping the way back to the horses clearly in mind, estimated they went nearly a mile more along the forested ridge before Tark stopped. The wolf led them down the slope from the ridge a little. Here was a fire-scarred break in the trees that gave vision downward.

"Vruun!" exclaimed Shan Kar in a taut whisper.

Nelson, startled, perceived in his first glimpse that, in the level forest down below this ridge, there sprawled the big river. And beside the river, on their side of it, glimmered the lights and buildings of the city of the Brotherhood.

"Blimy!" choked Lefty Wister. "Look at that place!"

Nelson realized that he was looking upon a city whose strangeness had no counterpart on Earth.

Chapter VIII

WEIRD CITY

Immeasurably ancient and alien looked Vruun, its glassy bubble-domes and towers brooding beneath the stars. Torchlight spilled from open doors and windows to illuminate vaguely its streets and enlacing forest-ways.

For Vruun, like Anshan, was a city into which the forest came. It was like a Venice, with winding ways of woods instead of canals — woods that were woven into the very texture of the city.

Eric Nelson, crouching with Shan Kar and the Cockney and the great wolf above the city, felt a cold shock of incredulity as he glimpsed the figures that came and went past lighted doorways down there. For those figures were not all human.

He had anticipated that. But anticipation had not tempered the shock of actually seeing it.

"It's a devil's city!" husked Lefty Wister. The little Cockney was shivering. "Look at those animals!"

"Now you understand why we Humanites rebelled and seceded from Vruun!" came Shan Kar's throbbing whisper.

Men and beasts came and went together across those torchlit doorways below. Men and women in silk or warrior dress. And beasts of the Brotherhood, mingling with the humans, jostling them.

Nelson glimpsed a little pack of gray wolves trotting into the city from the south. He saw two great tigers moving out of it that way. And across a shallow ford a half-dozen wild-maned horses came splashing over the river to Vruun.

Men and beasts of the Brotherhood-meeting and mingling in fantastic fraternity in this ancient, alien city! Wings swept across the sky and he saw great eagles gliding down toward the openings high in the glassy towers. He realized then that those towers had been built as eyries for the Winged Ones, that all Vruun, like Anshan, had been built to house this incredible fraternal mingling of species!

"There are too many abroad in Vruun — too many for this late!" Shan Kar was muttering.

"The coming of war has stirred all the Qans," came Tark's answering thought.

The wolf continued quickly. "Jhanon, the prisoner you seek to free, is held in the Hall of the Clans. But the Guardian and the Clan-leaders undoubtedly hold council there tonight."

Nelson glimpsed the distant building at which the wolf was gazing, an enormous pale bubble-structure, shimmering vaguely in the starlight near the center of the forest city.

"You've got to get us into the hall, so that we may liberate Jhanon," Shan Kar quickly told the wolf.

Nelson realized that everything was working their way. The fact of the Humanite prisoner being in that building made it possible to let Tark lead them right in there before they turned on him. Yet he had a dim suspicion that this fortunate coincidence was too fortunate! If Tark had really fathomed that their mission was to seize Kree and Nsharra—

The wolf's clear thought interrupted his uneasy speculations. "There's only one secret way to the Hall and that's by the drains of the ancients."

"We could too easily lose ourselves in that maze of tunnels," objected Shan Kar.

"Not if I guide you," Tark assured. "But the decision is yours. You can see there is no other way for you to enter Vruun."

Nelson liked the prospect less and less. But it was obviously madness for them to try entering the city openly. Unless they took the wolf's way in they must give up the whole attempt.

He said as much to Shan Kar. "We'll try it. Lefty, you can wait here if you want to."

"I'm goin'," whispered the Cockney hoarsely.

"We will swing around to enter Vruun from the north side," Tark said, "Few of the Brotherhood ever go out that way from the city."

"Why not?" Nelson demanded suspiciously.

Shan Kar answered, pointing. "The Cavern of Creation, the forbidden place, lies up there."

Nelson stared with swift interest. He saw that, north of Vruun, the level forests that encompassed the city marched up to grassy hills that were the foothills of the great northern mountains. In the face of those dark hills he glimpsed a great cavernous opening. He could see it in the dark because light came from it-a vague, unreal, quivering white glow.

The light danced and wavered, throbbing like a heart. Witch-light, ghost-light, pulsing mysteriously from that great opening!

"Yes, that is the Cavern," Shan Kar answered his thought. "The glow is of the cold fire that forbids entrance to all except the few who know the secret way."

Cold fire? Nelson felt a sharp wonder. There must be something deadly there to have inspired such awe and fear. But what?

Shan Kar said savagely, "The Cavern is a curse to L'Lan! That unholy place started the Brotherhood's lying myth that our human and beast races were there created equal."

They lost sight of that mysterious distant eye of light as they followed Tark down the forest slope. The wolf led them into the gully of a small stream-bed that ran past the north side of Vruun toward the river.

The stream-bed was empty in this dry season, its sands baked flat and hard. Its high banks hid the city from them as they approached. The wolf finally stopped and they heard his urgent thought-command. "This way — and quickly!"

They blundered after him toward a dark, mouth-like opening in the southern bank of the little gully. Tark led into the opening and Shan Kar, sword in hand, followed. Nelson and the Cockney gripped their pistols as they too stooped and went in.

They found themselves in absolute darkness. Nelson flashed his pocket-light, startling both Tark and Shan Kar.

"What is this place?" Nelson demanded.

It was a round tunnel of glassy substance. They could not have kept footing in it but for the dried sand and silt on its floor.

"These drains carry the waters from the ridges in the rainy season down beneath the city to the river," explained Shan Kar. "No man knows all their labyrinth."

"No man, but we of the Clans know," put in Tark. "I can lead you to an opening directly beneath the Hall."

Shan Kar surreptitiously pressed Nelson's wrist. It was the signal they had agreed upon and he knew what it meant. They were to stun the wolf as soon as he led them beneath the Hall of Clans. Then, swiftly and secretly, they must seize Kree and Nsharra and return.

Nsharra? Nelson felt an odd quickening of his pulse each time he thought of the witch-girl who had nearly had his life once. He hated that irrational throb of excitement.

"Still romantic," he told himself satirically. "Even ten years of Asia hasn't ground all that out of you."

Shan Kar was telling Tark, "Lead the way. But, Tark, remember that if you try to go too fast you will die very quickly."

The wolf made no reply but trotted deliberately forward up the gently slanting tunnel. The three men, stooping, followed. Soon, the tunnel forked. Tark unhesitatingly took the left turn. They followed, their pistols and the light covering him.

The tense silent progress into these ramifying tube-ways beneath Vruun began to get on Eric Nelson's nerves. He began to think he could hear a whispering echo of sound from behind them.

He told himself as he glanced swiftly backward, that he was letting his nerve slip, that he-

He did glimpse something back there in the tunnel! Blazing eyes in the gloom, eyes that were following them!

"It's a trap! We're being followed-" Nelson started to yell.

But the wolf caught his thought and acted even as the sound left his lips. Tark whirled and charged back on them with inconceivable swiftness. His hairy body was a living battering-ram that knocked the little light from Nelson's hand. The wolf crashed on through them.

"Knew it!" shrilled Lefty Wister, and triggered his automatic half-blindly as the light smashed out against the floor.

The thunderous echoes of the forty-five were deafening in the confined tunnel and Nelson heard ricochets screaming. Then Tark, who had crashed back through them to join those other eyes following them, sent his thought through the dark to them.

"We block your way to liberty! You cannot escape — lay down your weapons!"

"A trick!" raged Shan Kar. "Tark somehow managed to betray us without our knowing."

"As you planned to betray me with your lie of coming for Jhanon!" rang the wolf's thought from the darkness. "Fools, not to know that when Grih went toward Anshan at my order, he'd strike our trail and backtrail it — follow us to Vruun!"

Nelson, in a flash, realized the wolf's cunning in sending that Clawed One they had met in the forest on a direction that would cross their trail and thus tell the tiger something was wrong.

"Lay down your weapons and we shall not kill!" Tark's thought continued swiftly. "You shall be our hostages for Barin!"

For answer, Lefty Wister mouthed a curse and emptied his gun into the darkness. But again the slugs ricocheted in whining shrieks off the curved walls of the tunnel.

"They're back around the fork where your weapons can't reach them!" Shan Kar cried. "They'll arouse all Vruun! No chance now to seize the Guardian. We must escape this trap!"

Nelson, scrambling back to the fork in the tunnel, had hastily pulled a bulbous object from his pocket. He ripped out its pin.

"This will clear the way out for us!" he rasped and leaned and hurled the deadly thing around the fork of the tunnel.

"Down!" he yelled, and at the same instant heard the swift warning thought of Tark.

"An outland weapon, Grih! Out of the tunnel, quick!"

Nelson had a second to remember that Tark had seen grenades in action in Yen Shi before his own grenade exploded.

The explosion in the confined tunnel felt titanic. A giant scorching hand smashed them down flatter against the silted floor. Nelson leaped up, still dazed and shaky from the explosion, and shouted to the others. "Now — back out of here!"

They scrambled down through the tunnel, over broken shards of glass masonry the grenade had ripped from its walls. Now a dim circle of starlight ahead showed their exit.

They burst out of it into the starlit gully of the little dry stream, and tripped over a huge, striped, prostrate body. The tiger, Grih, had not escaped the tunnel quite in time and the outblast of the grenade had stunned or killed him.

"I hope it got that cursed wolf too!" raged Lefty. "I should have killed him when I wanted to first!"

Nelson, at that moment, heard a wolf-howl from nearby, and realized that Tark had escaped the blast in time.

"He rouses the city!" Shan Kar cried furiously. "But Barin shall pay the penalty for his trick! If we can reach our horses—"

They scrambled furiously up the gully of the dry streambed to the forested ridge. Nelson, gasping, turned and looked back. Out of torchlit Vruun, four-footed shapes were racing swiftly on their track. A terrific wolf-cry echoed up from that band of racing creatures, a heart-stopping sound.

Nelson seemed to himself in the next minutes, to be watching from another dimension as the three of them fled through the forest along the ridge. He was two men, and one of them was watching like a disembodied ka of himself while the other self expended every ounce of energy in flight.

"We're near the horses!" Shan Kar encouraged. "Diril will be waiting with them."

Again, from much closer behind them, came Tark's terrific hunting-cry. Lefty Wister stopped and whirled around, his pinched face a white blur, his voice hoarse and wild.

"I won't be hunted by that brute! I'll kill him!" He had his gun raised, was crouched, looking back.

"Lefty, keep your head!" cried Nelson, checking in mid-stride to turn back.

"Leave the man or you die with him!" cried Shan Kar from the darkness ahead.

He ought to, Nelson knew. It was sheer folly to try to save the Cockney, whose brain had given way to unreasoning hatred and horror.

He owed no more to Lefty than to the others. Mere fortune of war had thrown him into company of the hardbitten, crime-stained little band and he had no loyalty due to any of them. But the ingrained tradition of supporting a comrade-in-arms was too much for Nelson.

He turned back, grabbed the Cockney's arm. "Lefty, come—"

It was as far as he got. That brief delay had been enough for those who followed to overtake Lefty and himself. Dark, leaping shadows of wolf and tiger came plunging through the dry brush. Tark's thought-cry leaped ahead of him.

"We will not kill if you—"

Lefty Wister's automatic poured a stream of fire at the vague shadow of the wolf. Nelson saw Tark dodge with inhuman swiftness an instant before the other fired, then saw the wolf at the Cockney's throat.

He heard Lefty's bubbling, horrible scream as he triggered his own pistol at the dim shapes rushing upon him.

He saw the blazing, awful eyes of a striped beast leaping toward him from the right. An upraised giant paw eclipsed everything as he tried to swing his gun around in time.

Then Nelson saw nothing.

Chapter IX

JUDGMENT OF THE GUARDIAN

"The man stirs, mistress! I told you that he was but stunned."

Nelson heard that queer voice inside his mind, as he floated through infinities of aching darkness.

"Tark, it might be better for him if he had died out there in the forest!"

It seemed to Nelson that time had doubled back upon itself and that he lay again in the squalid inn in Yen Shi as he had lain that night he had first heard the thought-voices in his dreams.

But the throbbing pain in his head was no dream. He tried to raise his hand toward his temple and discovered by the attempt that his sitting body was bound in a chair.

Fear and memory pounced together upon Nelson's mind. He made a convulsive effort and opened his eyes. Brilliant sunlight from an open window caught his eye first and then the detail of the room focused slowly.

It was a high-ceilinged, long gallery with pale blue glassy walls. The sunlight danced and quivered and shimmered off those walls, sunbeams seeming to play around the room.

Nsharra sat in a chair six feet from him, and the great wolf, Tark, crouched like a dog beside her. Both were watching him. Subconsciously, he'd expected it. He'd remembered their disputing thought-voices as he had heard them at Yen Shi. He knew he'd heard them more clearly now because he still wore the thought-crown.

"Yes," said Nsharra quietly. "You are in Vruun, where you wished to come, Eric Nelson."

It was strange to hear his name from her lips and to remember that night in Yen Shi when he had told it to her between kisses. And it was stranger, to Nelson, to see her here sitting in her chair like a gray-eyed young princess in white silk and to realize that this was the singsong girl of that faraway night.

"Lefty?" he said. He said it without hope and the girl nodded her dark head slightly.

"Tark was forced to kill him. It was courageous of you to turn back for him. If you had not you too might have—"

She stopped. But Nelson, every sense sharpened to acuteness by his situation, seized on the unfinished sentence.

"I too might have escaped, you were going to say? Then Shan Kar did escape?"

Nsharra said nothing but her lids had half-veiled her eyes for a moment and Nelson knew that he had guessed correctly. For a moment, he wondered what Nick Sloan and Shan Kar would do now. Sloan wouldn't give up the campaign to crush the Brotherhood-not with a fortune in platinum to win.

Then, mentally, Eric Nelson shrugged his shoulders. What difference did it make to him now?

"Are you going to kill me too?" he asked directly.

"Are you afraid of death?" Nsharra countered.

He answered levelly. "I don't want to die. But I think I can manage it if I have to."

Nsharra smiled faintly. "That is an honest answer, Eric Nelson." Then her face sobered swiftly. "But it is not mere death you have to fear."

Tark looked up at the girl. The wolf's thought came clearly to Nelson.

"Mistress, I did what I could with the others of the Council. But your father is grimly resolved and Quorr and Hatha demand vengeance."

"And Ei?" questioned Nsharra's thought.

"Who knows the Winged One's mind?" countered the wolf. "They will all be here soon to judge the man."

Nelson had watched this silent discussion between the girl and wolf in a strange fascination that had undertones of horror. Witch-girl and her familiars! Mistress of kuei, Li Kin had called her! Not human, not wholly human—

Nsharra apparently read the thought behind his staring gaze. For a quick flush mantled her olive face.

"You are here for judgment, not I, outlander!" she flashed. "Do not look at me so!"

Witch-girl, maybe, but utterly feminine in that reaction, Nelson thought. The door opened suddenly and a man stood in the doorway looking in at them.

Nelson knew at once this was the Guardian of the Brotherhood — Kree, Nsharra's father. He had the stamp of authority on his face. He was old enough to have iron-gray hair but he stood sword-straight in the doorway. He wore a loose black silken tunic and trousers, and over them a long, gold-worked black cloak.

His piercing dark eyes were bent upon Nelson, but it was to Nsharra and Tark he spoke.

"So the outlander has regained his senses? That is well. The Clan leaders wish to see him."

He came into the room, and a great tiger stalked softly in after him. And with click of hoofs on the floor came too the big fire-eyed black stallion whom Nelson remembered also from Yen Shi.

Wings swished and through the broad open window swept an enormous eagle that perched lightly on the back of Nsharra's big chair.

Clan-leaders of the Brotherhood! Beast-eyes and bird-eyes watching him, judging him! Nelson's stomach began to crawl. It wasn't just fear. It was the outer world tradition of man and beast as separate orders of being that put a horror of this unhuman panel of judges into his mind.

Tark rose to his feet and looked at Kree and at the stallion and tiger and eagle.

"Before you judge, brothers, remember that this outlander is the last thread by which we may still draw Barin out of danger!"

Kree looked somberly at the great wolf. "It is your love for my son and daughter that speaks, Tark. These outlanders and their weapons are our greatest peril."

The stallion, Hatha, looked at Nelson with fiery eyes and Nelson heard his savage thought.

"This man should die. He seeks to help Shan Kar make L'Lan like his outer world, a place where our races are driven, enslaved brutes."

The raging thought of the great tiger Quorr instantly supported Hatha.

"Blood of our dead calls for vengeance! These outlanders have brought death into our land and must taste death!"

Nsharra's thought interrupted, as she rose from her chair.

"Yet this man sinned in ignorance! He knew nothing of the Brotherhood in all his life till he came to L'Lan."

The great eagle turned his head to the others and Nelson barely caught the swift flash of Ei's thought.

"Nsharra speaks truth. The man may have blundered into killing without realizing his crime."

Nelson was astonished. Why should the Winged One, seemingly farthest of them all from humanity, speak for him?

"Have you grown blind who boast sharpest sight, Ei?" raged the tiger. "Can you not see the deadly danger in these men?"

"Yet we could use him as hostage to free Barin!" Tark reminded them again anxiously. There was a silence in which they all looked at Kree. Nelson realized that, in this Council, the Guardian's decision would carry.

Kree spoke slowly. "We can do both things you wish. We can use this outlander as a hostage for Barin and at the same time we can punish him for what he has done. This man came into L'Lan to help shatter the Brotherhood. There is a penalty that we invoke on those who sin against the Brotherhood."

Nelson did not understand. But his brief flicker of relief vanished as he saw the horror that came into Nsharra's eyes.

"Let the man die rather than that!" she exclaimed. "He does not merit that penalty since he knew nothing of the Brotherhood!"

"He will learn and he will learn quickly," Kree said grimly.

"The Guardian is right! The punishment of the ancients for the outlander!" cried Quorr, tiger-eyes blazing.

"Tark, it shall be one of your clan," Kree told the wolf. "But that one must volunteer."

"There will be no lack to volunteer for the Brotherhood!" cried the wolf's thought. He raced swiftly out of the room.

Kree went out too. Tiger, eagle and stallion remained, watching Nelson.

Nsharra's face had an aching pity on it as she looked at Nelson. And that pity awakened true fear in him.

"Nsharra, what are they going to do to me?" he asked her.

"It is the penalty of the ancients," she answered. "Long ago, from the Cavern of Creation, a Guardian brought one of their subtle instruments that he had learned from their records to operate. It has been used rarely to punish those who transgress the Brotherhood."

"But what is it?" he asked thickly. "Torture?"

"Not torture nor death," she whispered. "But worse, a—"

She broke off to hasten across the room toward her father. Kree had returned, wheeling a bulky object in front of him. Nelson felt his fear increasing. He remembered what Shan Kar had said — that the Guardian possessed a queer power of the ancients to effect terrible transformations. A power that had been used only rarely against transgressors but that had left a memory of horror in all L'Lan.

He stared at the big object Kree had brought. It was an upright man-high platinum box mounted on wheels. The only clues to whatever strange apparatus was inside it were two levers upon its face.

From opposite sides of the top of the tall box branched two heavy platinum rods. Each ended in a queerly grooved quartz disk three feet in diameter. Each of the two big disks was parallel to the floor.

Nsharra was appealing to her father. "He does not even know what you plan, father! He will go mad! Does he merit that?"

"Do the beasts of the outer world merit the slavery and death that this man and his kind deal them?" retorted Kree harshly.

Nelson tried to reassure himself. He tried to tell himself that the queer platinum apparatus could be only a meaningless relic, that this was mere primitive mumbo-jumbo.

He couldn't do it. He couldn't conquer the horror that was tightening across his chest like a steel band.

Tark had come back into the room. And with him was another wolf, a young, rangy dog-wolf, lean of flank and bright of eye, big but dwarfed by the great leader of his Clan.

"This is Asha of my Clan," came Tark's thought. "He offers to be the one."

Kree looked at the young wolf. "You know the danger to you, Asha?"

"I know!" rang the dog-wolf's thought. "It is for the Brotherhood. I am willing."

"Then stand there, close to the outlander's chair," ordered Kree, pointing.

Nelson saw the dog-wolf walk over and stand a few feet from him, where the Guardian had indicated. The wolf looked over at him-strangely. Something in that bright unhuman gaze shook Nelson.

He wouldn't let all this flummery of superstitious rites shake his nerve — he wouldn't!

Kree wheeled the tall platinum machine between Nelson's chair and the young wolf. He adjusted it so that one of its branching quartz disks was over Nelson's head, the other over Asha the wolf.

"Let the ancients witness that I use their power not lightly but for the Brotherhood!" intoned the Guardian.

Superstition, traditional ritual-that was all it was, all it could be. But Nelson's heart had begun pounding hard as he saw the horror grow and grow on Nsharra's pale face.

Kree's hand fell. It thrust down both of the levers on the face of the platinum machine. From the two big quartz disks, white light sprang downward. One beam of blinding brilliance struck and bathed Nelson, the other struck the dog-wolf on the other side of the enigmatic machine.

Light? No, force! For Eric Nelson felt himself rocked by a terrific shock as the brilliant beam struck him. His brain shrieked to a nightmare rending sensation. He had a ghastly feeling that he, the real he, was being torn loose from something and dragged through nothingness.

Chapter X

DREAD METAMORPHOSIS

Nelson felt that he was falling, swooping downward like a meteor into bottomless gulfs. It came to him that he was dead and he wondered where his soul was going and what would happen after it got there.

The abyss rushed by him with a soundless scream as he plunged down and down. And then he struck bottom. It seemed to him that the universe tipped over on him, smothering him in utter darkness.

Presently, very faintly, there was light again and sound — a dim, blurred web of it lacing around him. He was vaguely aware of something and, after a while, he realized that he was breathing.

He was breathing heavily. It had a strange hoarse sound in his ears but it was nice to be breathing again. It meant that he was not dead after all. He lay waiting for the terrible giddiness to leave him, so that he could see again.

But he did not really need to see.

Across the dark confusion of his mind, a pattern began to grow. It was woven of unfamiliar things. Rustlings, scratchings, clickings, the different tempos of breathing — noises that should have been almost sub-auditory but instead were clear and sharp.

They were the background of the pattern, the warp. The threads of the woof were brighter, stronger. They were — smells.

The rich dark smell of horse, strong gray wolf-taint, the sullen crimson reek of tiger, the bright sharp acridity of a great bird. And man-smell, in itself a tapestry of odors, more subtle and complex than those of the beasts.

Eric Nelson realized with incredulous horror that not only did he know each separate smell but he knew the particular individuality of each. They had names — Hatha, Tark, Quorr, Ei, Kree and Nsharra.

He leaped broad awake then, on a surging shock of fear, and opened his eyes on a world he had never seen before.

It was a world without color. A world of gray shadings, black and white. He could perceive objects clearly but he perceived them on a strange plane. His field of vision was low and horizontal and there was no perspective. The big shimmering glass gallery appeared as a flat picture painted on a gray wall.

But he could see. With terrible clarity he could see himself, Eric Nelson, sleeping in a wooden chair six feet away! Instinctively a cry of horror rose to Nelson's lips, and was voiced as a howl.

Wolf-cry—

His body slept, but he was not in it and he spoke with the voice of a wolf.

Eric Nelson hung for a moment on the brink of madness and then clutched desperately at an explanation. Drugs — Kree had given him some vicious drug and he was having hallucinations. Some of his fear turned to anger against Kree. It was a cursed eerie sensation to stand looking at your own body. He wanted to get back into it, quickly.

He started to move toward it but it did not seem like the motion of will or thought. It was like physical motion. It was like walking on four feet!

Sinuous play of ropy muscles, lithely springy joints, the cushioned step of padded paws, the light click of claws on the glassy floor-

Dimly reflected in the glassy wall he saw the whole picture. Eric Nelson slumped sleeping in the chair, Nsharra seated with the eagle perched behind her and Tark at her feet, the great black stallion Hatha, the crouching tiger and Kree — all of them watching. Watching the young dog-wolf Asha pad slowly toward the sleeping man.

Nelson stopped and the reflection of Asha stopped too. He could see the wolf-face looking back at him from the dim mirror of the wall and a cold certainty that was beyond fear grew in his heart.

He began to tremble. He felt his lips draw back, and the mirrored Asha bared white fangs at him. Again Nelson cried out in a wolf's voice and he saw the reflection of Asha lift its head and howl.

Nelson went on toward his sleeping body, tried to touch it. And the image in the wall showed him the young dog-wolf pawing at the chest of the sleeping man and whimpering.

Quorr laughed, a coughing, snarling burst of mockery.

Nsharra spoke, her urgent thought-voice ringing quite clear in Nelson's mind.

"Father, speak to him! Explain to him, before his heart breaks!"

Nelson crouched watching them. He did not stir except that his head moved from side to side in little nervous jerks. He could feel the slow light breathing of his hitman body as his paws touched it.

Kree's thought came slowly. "It is true, outlander. You now inhabit the body of the wolf, Asha."

The strong wild thought of the stallion interrupted. "The power of the ancients! The punishment of those who transgress the Brotherhood!"

Again Quorr, the tiger, looked at Nelson and laughed.

"You should be proud, outlander! For you, the Guardian has made an exception, giving you the useful body of a Clan-brother. If we sin, we are banished into the bodies of the little hunted things that are born only to be eaten."

Then, sharp and clear, Ei the great eagle called out to Nelson. "Courage, outlander!" And Nsharra's softer echo said, "Courage, Eric Nelson."

It was then that Nelson's anger began to creep warm across his icy fear. But still he could not believe.

Stunned, bewildered, his thought went out to Kree. "It isn't possible. No science could do that — my brain in a wolf's body—"

"Not your brain, but your mind" Kree said grimly. "The mind is immaterial, a tenuous web of force. So said the ancients. And they built the instrument that can transfer minds to other bodies. I merely used that instrument.

"It is Asha's body still and Asha's brain. Asha's instincts, memories, latent knowledge are still in that brain and you will have use of them. But the real you, your conscious mind, is now in Asha's body and Asha's conscious mind-sleeps."

Nelson felt his new body tense and rise. He cried out bewilderedly, "But why? Why didn't you just kill me?"

"You are hostage for my son Barin," Kree answered. "When Barin is returned to us you will be returned to your own body!"

The anger that had been growing and growing in Nelson burst suddenly into a flame of rage. Rage such as he had never known, the wild anger of the wolf.

That they should have done this to him, Eric Nelson! That they should have dared!

Nelson was dimly aware of a strange linking of his familiar mind to something dark and primal and alien. Man-rage drawing from the deep red wells of the beast. He bared his fangs and snarled. He felt his whole new wolf-body coil tensely tight as he crouched.

Man-rage, beast-rage - memory, instinct, the loosing of the chain — not so alien after all, not so strange! Not so long ago man himself was a hunting beast!

He sprang in a beautiful, deadly, arching leap, straight for Kree.

He heard Nsharra cry out, and then in mid-air he felt the shock of Tark's great leaping body. The wolf's broad breast struck his shoulder, bowled him over to crash on the glassy floor. He slashed out, felt hair and hide tear under his teeth, tasted blood on his tongue.

And then Tark's greater weight was smothering him, Tark's huge jaws had closed on the back of his neck, and Tark was shaking him as a wolf-cub shakes a rat. The leader of the Clan flung Nelson from him, rolling over and over, and stood contemptuous and lordly in his strength, laughing with his red tongue run out between his open jaws.

"You've yet to learn," came his thought, "that I, Tark, lead the pack of the Hairy Ones!"

And Nelson, gathering himself, sent back the raging thought, "But I am not of your Clan!"

He sprang again at Tark.

It was strange, how he knew the ways of fighting. To dart in low to snap the foreleg, to use the breast as a ram, to keep the throat always covered, to dodge and dance and whirl and give the long terrible slashing stroke where the hair thins on the side of the opponent's neck, over the vein.

All these things Nelson knew and knew well. He was young and powerful and he was fighting to kill. But it availed him nothing. Tark moved like a wraith before him so that his jaws rang shut on the empty air-and before he could recover himself the old pack lord would smash him off balance with his greater weight and his jaws would chop and slash and then he would be away again, out of reach, laughing.

Nelson sprang and sprang again, and was beaten down, and would not quit. The hot sweet taint of blood reddened the air, and the great black stallion tossed his head and stamped his hoofs on the glassy floor. Quorr wrinkled his striped face in a snarling grin, and his claws ran in and out of their velvet sheaths and his tail twitched.

Only Ei perched motionless on the back of Nsharra's chair. The girl's face was white and full of pity and there was a sickness in her eyes. She looked pleadingly at her father, who sat watching with dark, somber eyes.

In answer to Nsharra's look Kree sighed and said, "Do not hurt him, Tark — more than you must."

And Tark answered, panting, "He must learn to obey!"

Once more his great jaws ripped, slashed and sent Nelson sprawling.

There came a time when Nelson tried to spring again and could not. Whipped to standstill, he stood trembling on legs braced far apart, his flanks heaving, his head hanging low. He left blood and sweat wetting his hairy wolf-body.

Tark's though asked, "Have you learned, cub?"

Nelson answered, "I have learned." But still the dulled fire of rage burned in him.

Tark's mind said grimly, "Do not forget!"

He trotted back to Nsharra's side and began to lick his fur, keeping one mocking eye on the creature that was Eric Nelson. Kree leaned forward, his deep-set gaze brooding somberly upon the wolf that was Nelson.

"Listen," he said. "Listen, Eric Nelson, to the price of your deliverance."

He waited, as though for Nelson's shaken mind to clear, before he went on.

"Go back to your comrades, Eric Nelson. Go back to the Humanites. Bring my son to me alive and safe and you shall be a man again."

Nelson voiced a bitter, snarling laugh.

"Do you think they'll believe me?" he demanded. "Do you think they'll listen?"

"You must make them listen."

"They'll shoot me on sight."

"They are your comrades, Eric Nelson. They are your problem." Kree turned to the pack-leader and his grim thought ordered, "Tark, start him on his way."

Tark rose and shook himself. He took three soft padding steps toward Nelson and said, "Go."

Nelson faced him sullenly and would not move.

Quorr's thought said, "The cub is forgetful, Tark. You must teach him his lesson again."

And Hatha, eyes rolling, stamped. "Teach him!"

Ei rustled his wings in what sounded like a sigh.

"Remember, outlander," his thought said, "courage is a good quality only when one is wise enough to use it."

"All of you, leave him alone!" cried Nsharra. She put out her hands pleadingly and said, "Please go, Eric Nelson!"

Nelson saw that there were tears on her cheeks. He watched Tark padding toward him, his great body all one coiled and fluid motion. He watched the filtered sunlight gleam on Tark's teeth.

The smell of his own blood rose hot in his nostrils.

Quite suddenly Nelson turned and ran. As though that were a signal, a burst of sound broke from behind him — the stamp and squeal of Hatha, the tiger's echoing roar, a long wolf-howl. They were answered all through the Hall of Clans.

And Nelson, as he ran, heard with the noise the great ringing shout of Tark's mind.

"Clam of the Brotherhood! Send Clan-call forth that Asha the wolf is outlaw!"

Through the glittering corridors and dusty vaulted halls they drove him, out of the building, out into the forested streets of Vruun. With hoof and fang and claw they drove him and always the word ran ahead of him like wildfire:

"Asha the wolf is outlaw - outlaw!"

And he ran, he who was both wolf and man, both Asha and Eric Nelson. He ran along the broad forest ways between the bubble buildings, though the glittering city, and there was no shelter for him.

The eagles swooped and screamed above him. The gray pack loped behind him and, if he tried to dart aside, Hatha's Clan were there with plunging hoofs to bar the way. And everywhere the striped and silent bodies of the Clawed Ones flowed in the shadows, laughing at him.

The men and women of Vruun watched the driving of the outlaw with bitter eyes and they too barred his way. Nelson went the only way left open to him, out of Vruun and into the open forest. He ran belly-flat, choking on his own heart, and he knew how a dog feels when he is driven through a town.

The forest shade gathered him in. The earth was moist and soft under his paws. He fled onward between the trees and, after a time, he realized that the pursuit had drawn back and was dim and far away.

He slowed his pace to a trot and then to a dragging walk. Breathing was an agony, a tearing pain. Where Tark had slashed him the blood oozed and dripped and took his strength with it and his every joint and muscle was a separate ache and soreness.

He crossed a little stream and stopped to drink. Then he lay down in the running water. The icy touch of it burned in his raw flesh.

He rose and slunk on.

Instinct that was not his own but Asha's told him where to lair. He crept into a hollow between two great gnarled roots, where it was warm.

There he lay down and began, wolf-like, to lick his wounds.

Night darkened over the valley of L'Lan.

Chapter XI

FOREST DANGER

He had slept for a time but he had dreamed and the dreams were full of terror. He woke suddenly as a man wakes from nightmare, with a start and a cry, and the howling sound of his own wolf-voice reminded him that the nightmare was reality.

He lay alone in the depths of the nighted forest and suffered as few men have suffered since the beginning of the world. Then, gradually, when he found that he was not going to die or go mad, the mind of Eric Nelson began to function again.

Nelson had lived a long time in the wild places of the world. He had spent years on the ragged edge of death and his inner fiber had been hammered into toughness. After the first black wave of horror passed it became a point of pride with him. He would not break. He would not give in and let himself be whipped by anything Kree and his people could do to him.

Again Nelson was conscious of the strange linking of his mind with another mind. Almost without his knowing it, the night and the forest had become familiar. He had spent many nights in the woods but never before had he had this intimate kinship with them. The forest was alive, teeming with its own secret business, and to the new Eric Nelson the secrets were all an open book, infinitely fascinating.

His keen ears told him of the motion of the grasses, the stirring of the trees, the rush of distant water in a streambed. Somewhere near him a mouse scuttered across a dry leaf and above him he could hear plainly the squeaking of a bat and the sound its leathery wings made on the air. Far away down the valley a deer went crashing through a deadfall and behind it rose the deep hunting cry of a tiger.

Eric Nelson felt the sweet taut thrill of excitement that passed through his borrowed body. He was hungry. The wind brought him news. He drew it in through quivering nostrils, rich and tangled and throbbing scents, the breath of the forest that was his mother because it had been Asha's mother.

He rose and stretched himself, wincing and grunting because he was very sore. Then he stepped out into the moonlight and stood with his head up, turning it slowly to quarter the wind, his nose twitching.

Downwind it was all a blank, but upwind a small pack of wolves was driving a buck. They were going away from him, and he must remember to stay clear. The tiger had killed. Down by the stream a band of Hoofed Ones had come to drink, and there were deer with them.

He would not run a deer. The whole forest would know of it. He would be content with a rabbit. Grim determination steeled Nelson's mind. He was going to Anshan and somehow he would bring Barin back to Vruun. But in the meantime they had made him a wolf. Very well, he would be a wolf.

The distant hunting call of the pack moaned and wailed down the valley. His throat quivered to answer it but he kept silent. Then, like a lean gray wraith in the splashing silver moonlight, he loped away south, toward Anshan.

At first it was difficult to move, but as his stiff body warmed and loosened he forgot his hunger in the delight of going. His man-body had been a pretty good one. It was tough and lithe and quicker than most. But it was a dull, clumsy thing compared to the one he had now.

The body of Asha was sensitively alive, from the bottoms of its padded paws to the tip of its nose. Every nerve and muscle worked to a hair-trigger reflex. It could thread its way like a lightning-flash through a thicket of brush and never so much as stir a leaf. It could stop stock-still without a quiver and it could soar over a deadfall like an arrow going home. And it could run. Gods of the forest, how it could run!

Nelson had known that when they drove him out of Vruun. But there had been no pleasure in running then. Now he sped down the open ridges for the sheer joy of it, rushing through the pools of moonlight, whirling and pouncing, playing delightedly with the shadows.

Hysteria, Nelson thought. Bravado, reaction against fear. But why not? Why not?

He crept upwind upon a little band of deer feeding by a pond. For a time he lay in the long grass and watched them, slender lovely things with their moist black noses and great eyes. A tall buck and two does and a fawn. The rich sweet odor of them made his mouth water.

Presently he rose and walked boldly out into the clearing. They lifted their heads and froze, staring at him-fleet-limbed children of flight and fear. Then they snorted the wolf-taint out of their nostrils and were gone.

He went to the pool and drank. His reflection looked up at him from the moonlit water, and he ran his tongue over his teeth and glared back wolf-eyed at himself.

He went southward again, ever southward toward An-shan, and he found no rabbits. He began to be aware that the game was moving. Time and again he crossed the new trails of deer and smaller beasts, all drifting westward. Word had gone through the forest that even the true beasts who were not of the Brotherhood could understand, and they were moving on both sides of the river, back to the barrier cliffs, leaving the forest to the Clans.

The wind, which had been blowing steadily from the south, dropped and then died altogether. Nelson felt a strange muffling of his senses then. It was like being partly blind and deaf because he could no longer tell what was happening upwind. He moved with increased caution and he was hungry, very hungry.

He came down to the edge of a wide shallow stream and suddenly, with a flying clatter of hoofs, a dappled mare and her foal came splashing across the fiord and up the low bank beside him.

"Greetings, Hairy One," came the mare's thought, She stopped to blow and, through Asha's wolf-senses, Nelson could smell the fear on her. The little inky-black foal whickered and pushed his head against his mother's flanks, his long ridiculous legs planted far apart and trembling. Both of them were streaked with sweat. "You have run far, oh Sister," said Nelson, through Asha's mind.

"North from Anshan," answered the mare, and shivered. She nosed the foal's thin neck tenderly and added, "I could not come before because of him."

"Anshan?" said Nelson. "I go toward there now."

"I know. The Clans are gathering for war." The rolling eyes of the mare showed white in the moonlight, "There is death in the forest, Hairy One! There is death in the valley of L'Lan!"

And the little black foal started. With lifted head and rolling eyes in imitation of his mother, he echoed, "Death! Death! Death!" His tiny hoofs made a rattling sound on the stones.

"Hush, little one," whispered the mare and stroked his quivering neck. "What do you know of death?"

"I have smelled it," said the foal. "Red in the wind." His nostrils showed pink as they flared to his frightened breathing.

"I pastured on the slopes above Anshan," the mare told Nelson, "because my mate was taken by the Humanites and I wanted to be near him. The foal was born there. There was killing in the valley below us. The outlanders had come with their new fire-weapons and many of the Brotherhood were killed."

"Death," said the foal again, and whinnied like a child crying. "I am afraid."

Nelson reassured with his thought. "You're safe now, little one. There is no death here."