The Wizard of Venus by Edgar Rice Burroughs

Author:Edgar Rice Burroughs [Burroughs, Edgar Rice]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: www.freemegalink.com, www.gnivek.com
Publisher: FML Books
Published: 2011-07-27T19:49:05+00:00

Chapter Seven

ERO SHAN AND I left the Great Hall with Fadan, the officer who had brought us in. "What now?" I asked him.

Fadan slrugged. "He didn't order you destroyed or imprisoned," he said; "so I guess that you're safe for the time being. I'll find a place for you to sleep, and you can eat with the officers. If I were you, I'd keep out of sight as much as possible. Our vootogan is a little forgetful.

If he doesn't see you, he may forget all about you; and those he forgets are the safest."

After Fadan had shown us our quarters, he left us to our own devices after warning us again not to enter the main building, where we would be most likely to encounter Morgas. "He seldom comes outside any more," he added; "so you are reasonably safe out here. And keep out of the garden," he concluded. "No one is allowed in there."

"Well," I said to Ero Shah when we were alone, "are we prisoners or guests?"

"I think we could walk out almost any night we chose to," he replied: "you must have noticed that the gate was not manned when we arrived."

"Yes, but I don't want to walk out as long as there is a chance that we may find Vanaia and take her with us.

Without her we don't get the anotar back."

"Do you think she's here?"

"I don't know, but I am inclined to believe that she is.

Morgas may be crazy enough to believe his own foolish claims to wizardry, but I doubt if he really believes that he turned Vanaia into a zaldar. He just doesn't want to give her up: that's all, and if she's as good looking as that picture we saw, I don't blame him."

"Perhaps she's dead," suggested Ero Shan.

"We'll stick around until we find out."

Morgas's castle was large, and in addition to the don-ion there were a number of smaller buildings within the enclosure which must have comprised fully twenty acres. Here, in addition to his retainers and their families, were a couple of hundred prisoners, held by their fear of Morgas.

I came to the conclusion that the fellow had some hypnotic powers, but I doubted that his victims really thought that they were zaldars. They were just fearful of what their maniac master would do to them if they didn't play his game. He used these captives to cultivate his fields farther up the valley above the castle and to tend the herds of zaldars after they were brought in from pasture by the herdsmen. They all pretended to think that these zaldars were human beings transformed by Morgas's wizardry. Consequently they would not eat them. This left all the zaldar steaks for Morgas's people.

I tried to talk with several of these prisoners, both Tolans and Ladias; but they seemed to fear me, probably because I was a stranger. They seemed hopelessly apathetic, accepting the fallacy that they were zaldars either because of fear of Morgas, or, as I came to believe, through self-hypnotism resulting from long suggestion.

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