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others, who presently joined him. The three corpses talked together,
pointing and gesticulating. It was horrible. I felt my skin creep.
What would they do? should they continue the search or would they
return to the castle? If the former, they would have to cross the river;
and they must already have learned that there was little likelihood of
their being able to do that. But that was attributing to dead brains the
power to reason! It seemed incredible. I asked Nalte what she thought
about.
"It is a mystery to me," she replied. "They converse, and they appear
to reason. At first I thought they were motivated through the hypnotic
influence of Skor's mind solely--that they thought his thoughts, as it
were; but they take independent action when Skor is away, as you
have seen them do today, which refutes that theory. Skor says that
they do reason. He has stimulated their nervous systems into the
semblance of life, though no blood flows in their veins; but the past
experiences of their lives before they died are less potent in
influencing their judgments than the new system of conduct and
ethics that Skor has instilled into their dead brains. He admits that
the specimens he has at the castle are very dull; but that, he insists, is
because they were dull people in life."
The dead men conversed for some time and then started slowly up
river in the direction of the castle, and it was with a sigh of relief that
we saw them disappear.
"Now we must try to find a good place to cross," I said. "I wish to
search the other side for some sign of Duare. She must have left
footprints in the soft earth."
"There is a ford somewhere down river," said Nalte. "when Skor
captured me we crossed it on our way to the castle. I do not know just
where it is, but it cannot be far."
We had descended the river some two miles from the point at which
we had seen the dead man emerge upon the opposite bank, without
seeing any sign of a crossing, when I heard faintly a familiar cackling
that seemed to come from across the river and farther down.
"Do you hear that?" I asked Nalte. She listened intently for a moment
as the cackling grew louder. "Yes," she replied--"the kazars. We had
better hide."
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Acting upon Nalte's suggestion we concealed ourselves behind a
clump of underbrush and waited. The cackling grew in volume, and
we knew that the kazars were approaching.
"Do you suppose that it is Skor's pack?" I asked.
"It must be," she replied. "There is no other pack in this vicinity,
according to Skor."
"Nor any wild kazars?"
"No. He says that there are no wild ones on this side of the big river.
They range on the opposite side. These must be Skor's!"
We waited in silence as the sounds approached, and presently we saw
the new leader of the pack trot into view on the opposite bank. Behind
him strung several more of the grotesque beasts, and then came Skor,
mounted on his zorat, with the dead men that formed his retinue
surrounding him.
"Duare is not there!" whispered Nalte. "Skor did not recapture her."
We watched Skor and his party until they had passed out of sight
among the trees of the forest on the other side of the river, and it was
with a sigh of relief that I saw what I hoped would be the last of the
jong of Morov.
While I was relieved to know that Duare had not been recaptured, I
was still but little less apprehensive concerning her fate. Many
dangers might beset her, alone and unprotected in this savage land;
and I had only the vaguest conception of where to search for her.
After the passing of Skor we had continued on down the river, and
presently Nalte pointed ahead to a line of ripples that stretched from
bank to bank where the river widened.
"There is the ford," she said, "but there is no use crossing it to look for
Duare's trail. If she had escaped on that side of the river the kazars
would have found her before now. The fact that they didn't find her is
fairly good proof that she was never over there."
I was not so sure of that. I did not know that Duare could swim nor
that she could not, but the chances were highly in favor of the latter
possibility, since Duare had been born and reared in the tree city of
Kooaad.
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"Perhaps they found her and killed her," I suggested, horrified at the
very thought of such a tragedy.
"No," dissented Nalte. "Skor would have prevented that; he wanted
her."
"But something else might have killed her; they might have found her
dead body."
"Skor would have brought it back with him and invested it with the
synthetic life that animates his retinue of dead," argued Nalte.
Still I was not convinced. "How do the kazars trail?" I asked. "Do they
follow the spoor of their quarry by scent?"
Nalte shook her head. "Their sense of smell is extremely poor, but
their vision is acute. In trailing, they depend wholly upon their eyes."
"Then it is possible that they might not have crossed Duare's trail at
all and so missed her."
"Possible, but not probable," replied Nalte. "What is more probable is
that she was killed and devoured by some beast before Skor was able
to recapture her."
The explanation had already occurred to me, but I did not wish to
even think about it. "Nevertheless," I said, "we might as well cross
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