Page:Weird Tales volume 36 number 02.djvu/12

 Through crimson pain-mists came the girl's voice again. "You have thought better of your desire now, Jotanian?"

Khal Kan heard his own laughter as a harsh, remote sound. "Not in the least, darling. For every lash-stroke you order now, you'll seek later to win my forgiveness with a hundred kisses."

"Twenty more strokes!" flared the girl's hot voice.

The whole world seemed pure pain to Khal Kan. and his back was a numbed torment, but he kept his face immobile. He was aware that the fierce laughter had ceased, that the dryland warriors were watching him in a silence tinged with respect.

The lashes ceased. Khal Kan jeered over his shoulder.

"What, no more? I thought you had more spirit, my sweet."

Golden Wings' voice was raging. "There's still whips for you unless you beg pardon for your insolence."

"No, no more," rumbled old Bladomir. "This princeling's wit-struck, it's plain to see. Tie them all up tightly and we'll send to Jotan demanding heavy ransom for them."

Khal Kan hardly felt them carrying him away to a dark, small tent, his body was so bathed in pain. He did feel the gasping agony of the jolt as he was flung down beside Brusul and Zoor.

HEY three, bound hand and foot with thongs of tough sand-cat leather, were left in the tent by guards who posted themselves outside.

"What a girl!" exclaimed Khal Kan. "Brusul, for the first time in my life, I've met a woman who isn't all tears and weakness."

"You're wit-struck, indeed!" flared Brusul. "I'd as lief fall in love with a sandcat as that wench. And look at the mess you've got us into here! Your father awaiting our report—and we prisoned here. Faugh.'"

"We'll get out of this some way," muttered Khal Kan. He felt a reaction of exhaustion. "Tomorrow will bring counsel—"

He heard Brusul grumbling on, but he was drifting now into sleep.

Golden Wings' face floated before him as sleep overtook him. He felt again the strong emotion with which the dryland girl had inspired him.

Then he was asleep, and was beginning to dream. It was the same dream as always that came quickly to Khal Kan.

He dreamed, first, that he was awaking—

E WAS awaking—in fact, he was now awake. He yawned, opened his eyes, and lay looking up at the white-papered bedroom ceiling.

He knew, as always, that he was no longer Khal Kan, prince of Jotan. He knew that he was now Henry Stevens, of Midland City, Illinois.

Henry Stevens lay looking up at the ceiling of his neat maple bedroom, and thinking of the dream he had just had—the dream in which, as Khal Kan, he had been flogged by the drylanders.

"I've got myself in a real fix, now," Henry muttered. "How am I going to get back to Jotan? But that girl Golden Wings is a darling—"

Beside him, his wife's plump figure stirred drowsily. "What is it, Henry?" she asked sleepily.

"Nothing, Emma," he replied dutifully. He swung out of bed. "You don't need to get up. I'll get my own breakfast."

On slippered feet, Henry Stevens plodded across the neat bedroom. As he carefully shaved, his mind was busy with remote things.

"Even if Jotan can pay the ransom, it'll be a week before I can get back there," he