I raised myself on an elbow. 'Who are you?' I demanded. 'Is this some new trick to torture me?'
'No. I am a prisoner, too. He has gone away. Perhaps we can escape.'
'How?' I asked. I was still skeptical, believing her a confederate of Skor.
'Can you get up here? There are no bars on my windows; that is because they are so high that no one could jump from them without being killed or badly injured. If we only had a rope!'
I considered the matter for a moment before I replied. What if it was a trick? Could I be any worse off in one room in this accursed castle than in another?
'There is rope down here,' I said. 'I will get it and come up. Perhaps there is not enough to be of any use to us, but I will bring what there is.'
'How will you get up?' she asked.
'That will not be difficult. Wait until I get the rope.'
I went to the chest of drawers and took out all the rope and string that I had discovered there the previous night; then I shoved the chest across the floor until it was directly beneath the trap door.
From the top of the chest I could easily reach the edge of the floor above. Handing the rope up to the girl, I quickly drew myself up into the room with her; then she closed the trap and we stood facing each other.
Despite her disheveled and frightened appearance, I found her even more beautiful than I had at first thought her; and as her fine eyes met mine in mutual appraisal my fears of treachery vanished. I was sure no duplicity lurked behind that lovely countenance.
'You need not doubt me,' she said as though she had read my thoughts, 'though I cannot wonder that you doubt every one in this terrible place.'
'Then how can you trust me?' I asked. 'You know nothing of me.'
'I know enough,' she replied. 'From that window I saw you when you and your companion came yesterday with Skor, and I knew that he had two more victims. I heard them bring you to the room below last night. I did not know which one of you it was. I wanted to warn you then, but I was afraid of Skor. I walked the floor for a long time trying to decide what to do.'
'Then it was you I heard walking?'
'Yes. Then I heard them come again; I heard sounds of a scuffle and Skor's awful laugh. Oh, how I hate and fear that laugh! After that it was quiet. I thought they had killed you, if it was you, or taken the girl away, if it was she they had imprisoned in the room below. Oh, the poor thing! And she is so beautiful. I hope she got away safely, but I am afraid there can be little hope of that.'
'Got away? What do you mean?' I demanded.
'She escaped very early this morning. I do not know how she got out of her room, but from the window I saw her cross the outer courtyard. She climbed the wall on the river side, and she must have dropped into the river. I did not see her again.'
'Duare has escaped! You are sure it was she?'
'It was the beautiful girl who came here with you yesterday. About an hour after she got away Skor must have discovered that she was gone. He came out of the castle in a terrible rage. He took with him all of the miserable creatures that watch the gate, and all his fierce kazars, and set out in pursuit. Possibly never again may we have such an opportunity to escape.'
'Let's get busy, then!' I exclaimed. 'Have you a plan?'
'Yes,' she replied. 'With the rope we can lower ourselves to the castle roof and from there to the courtyard. There is no one watching the gate; the kazars are gone. If we are discovered we shall have to trust to our legs, but there are only three or four of Skor's retainers left in the castle and they are not very alert when he is not here.'
'I have my weapons,' I reminded her. 'Skor did not take them from me, and if any of his people try to stop us I will kill them.'
She shook her head. 'You cannot kill them,' she whispered, shuddering.
'What do you mean?' I demanded. 'Why can I not kill them?'
'Because they are already dead.'
* * * * *
I looked at her in astonishment as the meaning of her words slowly filtered to my shocked brain to explain the pitiful creatures that had filled me with such disgust on the previous day.
'But,' I exclaimed, 'how can they be dead? I saw them move about and obey the commands of Skor.'
'I do not know,' she replied; 'it is Skor's terrible secret. Presently you will be as they, if we do not escape; and the girl who came with you, and I—after a while. He will keep us a little longer in the flesh for the purpose of his experiments. Every day he takes a little blood from me. He is seeking the secret of life. He says that he can reproduce body cells, and with these he has instilled synthetic life into the poor creatures that he has resurrected from the grave. But it is only a parody on life; no blood flows in those dead veins, and the dead minds are animated only by the thoughts that Skor transmits to them by some occult, telepathic means.
'But what he most desires is the power to reproduce germ cells and thus propagate a new race of beings fashioned according to his own specifications. That is why he takes blood from me; that is why he wanted the girl you call Duare. When our blood has become so depleted that death is near, he will kill us and we will be like those others. But he would not keep us here; he would take us to the city where he rules as jong. Here he keeps only a few poor, degraded specimens; but he says that in Kormor he has many fine ones.'
'So he is a jong? I doubted it.'
'He made himself a jong and created his own subjects,' she said.
'And he kept you only to draw blood from you?'
'Yes. He is not like other men; he is not human.'
'How long have you been here?'
'A long time; but I am still alive because Skor has been away most of the time in Kormor.'
'Well, we must get away, too, before he returns. I want to search for Duare.'
I went to one of the windows, none of which was barred, and looked down on the castle roof below, a distance of about twenty feet. Then I got the rope and examined it carefully. There were several pieces, in all about forty feet—more than enough; also it was stout rope. I tied the pieces together and then returned to the window. The girl was at my elbow.
'Can anyone see us from here?' I asked.
'The creatures are not very alert,' she replied. 'Those that Skor left here are the servants. They remain in a room on the first floor on the other side of the castle. When he is away they just sit. After a while two of them will bring food for us; and we should get away before they come, for sometimes they forget to go back to their quarters; then they sit around outside my door for hours. You will notice that there is a grille in the door; they would see us if we attempted to escape while they were there.'
'We'll start now,' I said. Then I made a loop in one end of the rope and passed it around the girl's body so that she could sit in it while I lowered her to the roof.
* * * * *
Without an instant's hesitation she stepped to the sill of the window and lowered herself over the edge until she was seated securely in the loop. Bracing my feet against the wall, I let her down rapidly until I felt the rope go slack in my hands.
I then dragged her cot close beneath the window, passed the free end of the rope beneath it and out the window, letting it fall toward the roof below. This gave me two strands of rope reaching to the roof with the middle part of the rope passing around the cot which was too large to be dragged through the window by my weight as I descended.
Grasping both strands firmly in my two hands, I slipped through the window and slid quickly to the side of the waiting girl; then I pulled in rapidly on one end of the rope, dragging the free end around the cot until it fell to the roof. Thus I retrieved the rope for use in descending the remainder of the way to the ground.
We crossed the roof quickly to the edge overlooking the outer courtyard into which we expected to descend. There was no one in sight, and I was just about to lower the girl over the edge when a loud shout from behind us startled us both.
Turning, we saw three of Skor's creatures looking at us from an upper window of the castle on the opposite side of the inner court. Almost as we turned, the three left the window and we could hear them shouting through
