“A great enemy and plotter against King Kull,” the druid said who had been Tu of Valusia, “was the mage and master of illusion, Thulsa Doom. In no less than four plots did Kull foil the wizard and put defeat on him, though in each wise Thulsa Doom prevailed for a time. On two occasions did the king like to lose his life to this unrelenting enemy. And eventually Kull and Tu and a mage on Kull’s behalf won the final victory-on the isle where we’re just after being.”

The others glanced back. But the isle of sorcery-wrought dread and evil, that isle of Kull’s sorcerously preserved castle, was long since left behind and lost to sight. Hours ago they had consigned to the sea the comrades they had lost to death there, of the power and plottings of their captive and the iresome illusions he created.

“There Thulsa Doom was-left,” the druid said, “trapped by sorcerous bonds: the bondage of a body without hands or feet or voice.”

“The serpent Cormac slew!” the Dane rumbled. “Four months agone that was, when he and I rescued Samaire from the Norsemen.”

Redbearded Dane looked at the red-maned woman he called Samaire. She was in her second decade of life and wore strange tall boots of black leather that rose up her thighs to vanish under her folded tunic. Her long hair gleamed orange and gold in the sunlight.

“And the vanishing?” she asked, this Samaire. “Those several times Thulsa Doom vanished, Bas, whilst we laboured to load our ships, and his disappearing even when impaled?”

“And returned, still impaled,” the youngest aboard said, and he glanced at the undying wizard. The youth sat on a rowing bench, near Cormac. His hair was very fair.

“Of old, Bas the Druid made reply, “Thulsa Doom effected escape into another dimension, a sort of world parallel to ours and not unlike it-and yet different.