“Better that it were, mountain man! I have lain in the dungeons of Karsten. Yes, I have been in the question room of such a one. But better there than here.”

Simon was busy sorting out recent memories. He had climbed to a cliff top to spy upon a cove. There had been that strange vessel in harbor there, then attack from a bird which might not have been a bird at all!

Now it added up to only one answer — he lay in the very ship he had seen!

“Are we in the hands of the man-buyers out of Gorm?” he asked.

“Just so, mountain man. You were not with us when those devils of Yvian’s following gave us to the Kolder. Are you one of the Falconers they snared later?”

“Falconers! Ho, men of the Winged Ones!” Simon raised his voice, heard it echo hollowly back from unseen walls.”How many of you lie here? I, whom am of the raiders, ask it!”

“Three of us, raider. Though Faltjar was borne hither limp as a death-stricken man, and we do not know if yet he lives.”

“Faltjar! The guard of the southern passes! How was he taken — and you?”

“We heard of a cove where ships dared land and there was a messenger from Estcarp saying that perhaps supplies might be sent to us by sea if such could be found. So the Lord of Wings ordered us to explore. And we were struck down by hawks as we rode. Though they were not our hawks who battled for us. Then we awoke on shore, stripped of our mail and weapons, and they brought us aboard this craft which has no like in the world. I say that, who am Tandis and served five years as a marine to Sulcarmen. Many ports have I seen and more ships than a man can count in a week of steady marking, yet none kin to this one.”

“It is born of the witchery of Kolder,” whispered the weak voice on Simon’s right. “They came, but how can a man reckon time when he is enclosed in the dark without end? Is it night or day, this day or that? I lay in Kars prison because I offered refuge to a woman and child of the old race when the Horning went forth. They took all of us who were young from that prison and brought us to a delta island. There we were examined.”

“By whom?” Simon asked eagerly. Here was some one who might have seen the mysterious Kolder, from whom he might be able to get some positive information concerning them.