16

Tarzan the Terrible

by Edgar R. Burroughs

16, TARZAN THE TERRIBLE by Edgar R. Burroughs
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The Secret Way

IT WAS a baffled gryf that bellowed in angry rage as Tarzan's
sleek brown body cutting the moonlit waters shot through the
aperture in the wall of the gryf pool and out into the lake
beyond. The ape-man smiled as he thought of the comparative ease
with which he had defeated the purpose of the high priest but his
face clouded again at the ensuing remembrance of the grave danger
that threatened his mate. His sole object now must be to return
as quickly as he might to the chamber where he had last seen her
on the third floor of the Temple of the Gryf, but how he was to
find his way again into the temple grounds was a question not
easy of solution.

In the moonlight he could see the sheer cliff rising from the
water for a great distance along the shore--far beyond the
precincts of the temple and the palace--towering high above him,
a seemingly impregnable barrier against his return. Swimming
close in, he skirted the wall searching diligently for some
foothold, however slight, upon its smooth, forbidding surface.
Above him and quite out of reach were numerous apertures, but
there were no means at hand by which he could reach them.
Presently, however, his hopes were raised by the sight of an
opening level with the surface of the water. It lay just ahead
and a few strokes brought him to it--cautious strokes that
brought forth no sound from the yielding waters. At the nearer
side of the opening he stopped and reconnoitered. There was no
one in sight. Carefully he raised his body to the threshold of
the entrance-way, his smooth brown hide glistening in the
moonlight as it shed the water in tiny sparkling rivulets.

Before him stretched a gloomy corridor, unlighted save for the
faint illumination of the diffused moonlight that penetrated it
for but a short distance from the opening. Moving as rapidly as
reasonable caution warranted, Tarzan followed the corridor into
the bowels of the cave. There was an abrupt turn and then a
flight of steps at the top of which lay another corridor running
parallel with the face of the cliff. This passage was dimly
lighted by flickering cressets set in niches in the walls at
considerable distances apart. A quick survey showed the ape-man
numerous openings upon each side of the corridor and his quick
ears caught sounds that indicated that there were other beings
not far distant--priests, he concluded, in some of the apartments
letting upon the passageway.

To pass undetected through this hive of enemies appeared quite
beyond the range of possibility. He must again seek disguise and
knowing from experience how best to secure such he crept
stealthily along the corridor toward the nearest doorway. Like
Numa, the lion, stalking a wary prey he crept with quivering
nostrils to the hangings that shut off his view from the interior
of the apartment beyond. A moment later his head disappeared
within; then his shoulders, and his lithe body, and the hangings
dropped quietly into place again. A moment later there filtered
to the vacant corridor without a brief, gasping gurgle and again
silence. A minute passed; a second, and a third, and then the
hangings were thrust aside and a grimly masked priest of the
temple of Jad-ben-Otho strode into the passageway.

With bold steps he moved along and was about to turn into a
diverging gallery when his attention was aroused by voices coming
from a room upon his left. Instantly the figure halted and
crossing the corridor stood with an ear close to the skins that
concealed the occupants of the room from him, and him from them.
Presently he leaped back into the concealing shadows of the
diverging gallery and immediately thereafter the hangings by
which he had been listening parted and a priest emerged to turn
quickly down the main corridor. The eavesdropper waited until the
other had gained a little distance and then stepping from his
place of concealment followed silently behind.

The way led along the corridor which ran parallel with the face
of the cliff for some little distance and then Pan-sat, taking a
cresset from one of the wall niches, turned abruptly into a small
apartment at his left. The tracker followed cautiously in time to
see the rays of the flickering light dimly visible from an
aperture in the floor before him. Here he found a series of
steps, similar to those used by the Waz-don in scaling the cliff
to their caves, leading to a lower level.

First satisfying himself that his guide was continuing upon his
way unsuspecting, the other descended after him and continued his
stealthy stalking. The passageway was now both narrow and low,
giving but bare headroom to a tall man, and it was broken often
by flights of steps leading always downward. The steps in each
unit seldom numbered more than six and sometimes there was only
one or two but in the aggregate the tracker imagined that they
had descended between fifty and seventy-five feet from the level
of the upper corridor when the passageway terminated in a small
apartment at one side of which was a little pile of rubble.

Setting his cresset upon the ground, Pan-sat commenced hurriedly
to toss the bits of broken stone aside, presently revealing a
small aperture at the base of the wall upon the opposite side of
which there appeared to be a further accumulation of rubble. This
he also removed until he had a hole of sufficient size to permit
the passage of his body, and leaving the cresset still burning
upon the floor the priest crawled through the opening he had made
and disappeared from the sight of the watcher hiding in the
shadows of the narrow passageway behind him.

No sooner, however, was he safely gone than the other followed,
finding himself, after passing through the hole, on a little
ledge about halfway between the surface of the lake and the top
of the cliff above. The ledge inclined steeply upward, ending at
the rear of a building which stood upon the edge of the cliff and
which the second priest entered just in time to see Pan-sat pass
out into the city beyond.

As the latter turned a nearby corner the other emerged from the
doorway and quickly surveyed his surroundings. He was satisfied
the priest who had led him hither had served his purpose in so
far as the tracker was concerned. Above him, and perhaps a
hundred yards away, the white walls of the palace gleamed against
the northern sky. The time that it had taken him to acquire
definite knowledge concerning the secret passageway between the
temple and the city he did not count as lost, though he begrudged
every instant that kept him from the prosecution of his main
objective. It had seemed to him, however, necessary to the
success of a bold plan that he had formulated upon overhearing
the conversation between Lu-don and Pan-sat as he stood without
the hangings of the apartment of the high priest.

Alone against a nation of suspicious and half-savage enemies he
could scarce hope for a successful outcome to the one great issue
upon which hung the life and happiness of the creature he loved
best. For her sake he must win allies and it was for this purpose
that he had sacrificed these precious moments, but now he lost no
further time in seeking to regain entrance to the palace grounds
that he might search out whatever new prison they had found in
which to incarcerate his lost love.

He found no difficulty in passing the guards at the entrance to
the palace for, as he had guessed, his priestly disguise disarmed
all suspicion. As he approached the warriors he kept his hands
behind him and trusted to fate that the sickly light of the
single torch which stood beside the doorway would not reveal his
un-Pal-ul-donian feet. As a matter of fact so accustomed were
they to the comings and goings of the priesthood that they paid
scant attention to him and he passed on into the palace grounds
without even a moment's delay.

His goal now was the Forbidden Garden and this he had little
difficulty in reaching though he elected to enter it over the
wall rather than to chance arousing any suspicion on the part of
the guards at the inner entrance, since he could imagine no
reason why a priest should seek entrance there thus late at
night.

He found the garden deserted, nor any sign of her he sought.
That she had been brought hither he had learned from the
conversation he had overheard between Lu-don and Pan-sat, and he
was sure that there had been no time or opportunity for the high
priest to remove her from the palace grounds. The garden he knew
to be devoted exclusively to the uses of the princess and her
women and it was only reasonable to assume therefore that if Jane
had been brought to the garden it could only have been upon an
order from Ko-tan. This being the case the natural assumption
would follow that he would find her in some other portion of
O-lo-a's quarters.

Just where these lay he could only conjecture, but it seemed
reasonable to believe that they must be adjacent to the garden,
so once more he scaled the wall and passing around its end
directed his steps toward an entrance-way which he judged must
lead to that portion of the palace nearest the Forbidden Garden.

To his surprise he found the place unguarded and then there fell
upon his ear from an interior apartment the sound of voices
raised in anger and excitement. Guided by the sound he quickly
traversed several corridors and chambers until he stood before
the hangings which separated him from the chamber from which
issued the sounds of altercation. Raising the skins slightly he
looked within. There were two women battling with a Ho-don
warrior. One was the daughter of Ko-tan and the other Pan-at-lee,
the Kor-ul-ja.

At the moment that Tarzan lifted the hangings, the warrior threw
O-lo-a viciously to the ground and seizing Pan-at-lee by the hair
drew his knife and raised it above her head. Casting the
encumbering headdress of the dead priest from his shoulders the
ape-man leaped across the intervening space and seizing the brute
from behind struck him a single terrible blow.

As the man fell forward dead, the two women recognized Tarzan
simultaneously. Pan-at-lee fell upon her knees and would have
bowed her head upon his feet had he not, with an impatient
gesture, commanded her to rise. He had no time to listen to their
protestations of gratitude or answer the numerous questions which
he knew would soon be flowing from those two feminine tongues.

"Tell me," he cried, "where is the woman of my own race whom
Ja-don brought here from the temple?"

"She is but this moment gone," cried O-lo-a. "Mo-sar, the father
of this thing here," and she indicated the body of Bu-lot with a
scornful finger, "seized her and carried her away."

"Which way?" he cried. "Tell me quickly, in what direction he
took her."

"That way," cried Pan-at-lee, pointing to the doorway through
which Mo-sar had passed. "They would have taken the princess and
the stranger woman to Tu-lur, Mo-sar's city by the Dark Lake."

"I go to find her," he said to Pan-at-lee, "she is my mate. And
if I survive I shall find means to liberate you too and return
you to Om-at."

Before the girl could reply he had disappeared behind the
hangings of the door near the foot of the dais. The corridor
through which he ran was illy lighted and like nearly all its
kind in the Ho-don city wound in and out and up and down, but at
last it terminated at a sudden turn which brought him into a
courtyard filled with warriors, a portion of the palace guard
that had just been summoned by one of the lesser palace chiefs to
join the warriors of Ko-tan in the battle that was raging in the
banquet hall.

At sight of Tarzan, who in his haste had forgotten to recover his
disguising headdress, a great shout arose. "Blasphemer!" "Defiler
of the temple!" burst hoarsely from savage throats, and mingling
with these were a few who cried, "Dor-ul-Otho!" evidencing the
fact that there were among them still some who clung to their
belief in his divinity.

To cross the courtyard armed only with a knife, in the face of
this great throng of savage fighting men seemed even to the giant
ape-man a thing impossible of achievement. He must use his wits
now and quickly too, for they were closing upon him. He might
have turned and fled back through the corridor but flight now
even in the face of dire necessity would but delay him in his
pursuit of Mo-sar and his mate.

"Stop!" he cried, raising his palm against them. "I am the
Dor-ul-Otho and I come to you with a word from Ja-don, who it is
my father's will shall be your king now that Ko-tan is slain.
Lu-don, the high priest, has planned to seize the palace and
destroy the loyal warriors that Mo-sar may be made king--Mo-sar
who will be the tool and creature of Lu-don. Follow me. There is
no time to lose if you would prevent the traitors whom Lu-don has
organized in the city from entering the palace by a secret way
and overpowering Ja-don and the faithful band within."

For a moment they hesitated. At last one spoke. "What guarantee
have we," he demanded, "that it is not you who would betray us
and by leading us now away from the fighting in the banquet hall
cause those who fight at Ja-don's side to be defeated?"

"My life will be your guarantee," replied Tarzan. "If you find
that I have not spoken the truth you are sufficient in numbers to
execute whatever penalty you choose. But come, there is not time
to lose. Already are the lesser priests gathering their warriors
in the city below," and without waiting for any further parley he
strode directly toward them in the direction of the gate upon the
opposite side of the courtyard which led toward the principal
entrance to the palace ground.

Slower in wit than he, they were swept away by his greater
initiative and that compelling power which is inherent to all
natural leaders. And so they followed him, the giant ape-man with
a dead tail dragging the ground behind him--a demi-god where
another would have been ridiculous. Out into the city he led them
and down toward the unpretentious building that hid Lu-don's
secret passageway from the city to the temple, and as they
rounded the last turn they saw before them a gathering of
warriors which was being rapidly augmented from all directions as
the traitors of A-lur mobilized at the call of the priesthood.

"You spoke the truth, stranger," said the chief who marched at
Tarzan's side, "for there are the warriors with the priests among
them, even as you told us."

"And now," replied the ape-man, "that I have fulfilled my promise
I will go my way after Mo-sar, who has done me a great wrong.
Tell Ja-don that Jad-ben-Otho is upon his side, nor do you forget
to tell him also that it was the Dor-ul-Otho who thwarted
Lu-don's plan to seize the palace."

"I will not forget," replied the chief. "Go your way. We are
enough to overpower the traitors."

"Tell me," asked Tarzan, "how I may know this city of Tu-lur?"

"It lies upon the south shore of the second lake below A-lur,"
replied the chief, "the lake that is called Jad-in-lul."

They were now approaching the band of traitors, who evidently
thought that this was another contingent of their own party since
they made no effort either toward defense or retreat. Suddenly
the chief raised his voice in a savage war cry that was
immediately taken up by his followers, and simultaneously, as
though the cry were a command, the entire party broke into a mad
charge upon the surprised rebels.

Satisfied with the outcome of his suddenly conceived plan and
sure that it would work to the disadvantage of Lu-don, Tarzan
turned into a side street and pointed his steps toward the
outskirts of the city in search of the trail that led southward
toward Tu-lur.