enough of you to warrant me in passing through your heart the jeddak's
steel--of how you stole the brains from the warrior U-Van so that he
thought he saw your headless body still endowed with life; of how you
caused another to believe that you had escaped, making him to see
naught but an empty bench and a blank wall where you had been."

"Ah, O-Tar, but that is as nothing!" cried a young padwar who had come
in command of the escort that brought Ghek. "The thing which he did to
I-Zav, here, would prove his guilt alone."

"What did he to the warrior I-Zav?" demanded O-Tar. "Let I-Zav speak!"

The warrior I-Zav, a great fellow of bulging muscles and thick neck,
advanced to the foot of the throne. He was pale and still trembling
visibly as from a nervous shock.

"Let my first ancestor be my witness, O-Tar, that I speak the truth,"
he began. "I was left to guard this creature, who sat upon a bench,
shackled to the wall. I stood by the open doorway at the opposite side
of the chamber. He could not reach me, yet, O-Tar, may Iss engulf me if
he did not drag me to him helpless as an unhatched egg. He dragged me
to him, greatest of jeddaks, with his eyes! With his eyes he seized
upon my eyes and dragged me to him and he made me lay my swords and
dagger upon the table and back off into a corner, and still keeping his
eyes upon my eyes his head quitted his body and crawling upon six short
legs it descended to the floor and backed part way into the hole of an
ulsio, but not so far that the eyes were not still upon me and then it
returned with the key to its fetter and after resuming its place upon
its own shoulders it unlocked the fetter and again dragged me across
the room and made me to sit upon the bench where it had been and there
it fastened the fetter about my ankle, and I could do naught for the
power of its eyes and the fact that it wore my two swords and my
dagger. And then the head disappeared down the hole of the ulsio with
the key, and when it returned, it resumed its body and stood guard over
me at the doorway until the padwar came to fetch it hither."

"It is enough!" said O-Tar, sternly. "Both shall receive the jeddak's
steel," and rising from his throne he drew his long sword and descended
the marble steps toward them, while two brawny warriors seized Tara by
either arm and two seized Ghek, holding them facing the naked blade of
the jeddak.

"Hold, just O-Tar!" cried U-Dor. "There be yet another to be judged.