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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d7b82bc --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,4 @@ +*.txt text eol=lf +*.htm text eol=lf +*.html text eol=lf +*.md text eol=lf diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..dd73fc8 --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #63956 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/63956) diff --git a/old/63956-h.zip b/old/63956-h.zip Binary files differdeleted file mode 100644 index cfd0bd4..0000000 --- a/old/63956-h.zip +++ /dev/null diff --git a/old/63956-h/63956-h.htm b/old/63956-h/63956-h.htm deleted file mode 100644 index dd440b0..0000000 --- a/old/63956-h/63956-h.htm +++ /dev/null @@ -1,3402 +0,0 @@ -<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" - "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> -<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> - <head> - <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=us-ascii" /> - <meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css" /> - <title> - The Project Gutenberg eBook of Queen of the Martian Catacombs, by Leigh Brackett. - </title> - <link rel="coverpage" href="images/cover.jpg" /> - - <style type="text/css"> - -body { - margin-left: 10%; - margin-right: 10%; -} - - h1,h2 { - text-align: center; /* all headings centered */ - clear: both; -} - -p { - margin-top: .51em; - text-align: justify; - margin-bottom: .49em; -} - -hr { - width: 33%; - margin-top: 2em; - margin-bottom: 2em; - margin-left: 33.5%; - margin-right: 33.5%; - clear: both; -} - -hr.chap {width: 65%; margin-left: 17.5%; margin-right: 17.5%;} -hr.tb {width: 45%; margin-left: 27.5%; margin-right: 27.5%;} - -.center {text-align: center;} - -.right {text-align: right;} - -/* Images */ -.figcenter { - margin: auto; - text-align: center; -} - -.caption p -{ - text-align: center; - text-indent: 0; - margin: 0.25em 0; -} - -div.titlepage { - text-align: center; - page-break-before: always; - page-break-after: always; -} - -div.titlepage p { - text-align: center; - text-indent: 0em; - font-weight: bold; - line-height: 1.5; - margin-top: 3em; -} - -.ph1 { text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; } -.ph1 { font-size: medium; margin: .83em auto; } - - - </style> - </head> -<body> - - -<pre> - -Project Gutenberg's Queen of the Martian Catacombs, by Leigh Brackett - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most -other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of -the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - -Title: Queen of the Martian Catacombs - -Author: Leigh Brackett - -Release Date: December 4, 2020 [EBook #63956] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: ASCII - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK QUEEN OF THE MARTIAN CATACOMBS *** - - - - -Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online -Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net - - - - - - -</pre> - - -<div class="figcenter"> - <img src="images/illusc.jpg" alt=""/> -</div> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<div class="titlepage"> - -<h1>Queen Of The Martian Catacombs</h1> - -<h2>By LEIGH BRACKETT</h2> - -<p>Gaunt giant and passionate beauty, they dragged<br /> -their thirst-crazed way across the endless<br /> -crimson sands in a terrible test of endurance.<br /> -For one of them knew where cool life-giving<br /> -water lapped old stones smooth—a place of<br /> -secret horror that it was death to reveal!</p> - -<p>[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from<br /> -Planet Stories Summer 1949.<br /> -Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that<br /> -the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p>For hours the hard-pressed beast had fled across the Martian desert -with its dark rider. Now it was spent. It faltered and broke stride, -and when the rider cursed and dug his heels into the scaly sides, the -brute only turned its head and hissed at him. It stumbled on a few more -paces into the lee of a sandhill, and there it stopped, crouching down -in the dust.</p> - -<p>The man dismounted. The creature's eyes burned like green lamps in the -light of the little moons, and he knew that it was no use trying to -urge it on. He looked back, the way he had come.</p> - -<p>In the distance there were four black shadows grouped together in the -barren emptiness. They were running fast. In a few minutes they would -be upon him.</p> - -<p>He stood still, thinking what he should do next. Ahead, far ahead, was -a low ridge, and beyond the ridge lay Valkis and safety, but he could -never make it now. Off to his right, a lonely tor stood up out of the -blowing sand. There were tumbled rocks at its foot.</p> - -<p>"They tried to run me down in the open," he thought. "But here, by the -Nine Hells, they'll have to work for it!"</p> - -<p>He moved then, running toward the tor with a lightness and speed -incredible in anything but an animal or a savage. He was of Earth -stock, built tall, and more massive than he looked by reason of his -leanness. The desert wind was bitter cold, but he did not seem to -notice it, though he wore only a ragged shirt of Venusian spider silk, -open to the waist. His skin was almost as dark as his black hair, -burned indelibly by years of exposure to some terrible sun. His eyes -were startlingly light in colour, reflecting back the pale glow of the -moons.</p> - -<p>With the practised ease of a lizard he slid in among the loose and -treacherous rocks. Finding a vantage point, where his back was -protected by the tor itself, he crouched down.</p> - -<p>After that he did not move, except to draw his gun. There was something -eerie about his utter stillness, a quality of patience as unhuman as -the patience of the rock that sheltered him.</p> - -<p>The four black shadows came closer, resolved themselves into mounted -men.</p> - -<p>They found the beast, where it lay panting, and stopped. The line of -the man's footprints, already blurred by the wind but still plain -enough, showed where he had gone.</p> - -<p>The leader motioned. The others dismounted. Working with the swift -precision of soldiers, they removed equipment from their saddle-packs -and began to assemble it.</p> - -<p>The man crouching under the tor saw the thing that took shape. It was a -Banning shocker, and he knew that he was not going to fight his way out -of this trap. His pursuers were out of range of his own weapon. They -would remain so. The Banning, with its powerful electric beam, would -take him—dead or senseless, as they wished.</p> - -<p>He thrust the useless gun back into his belt. He knew who these -men were, and what they wanted with him. They were officers of the -Earth Police Control, bringing him a gift—twenty years in the Luna -cell-blocks.</p> - -<p>Twenty years in the grey catacombs, buried in the silence and the -eternal dark.</p> - -<p>He recognized the inevitable. He was used to inevitables—hunger, -pain, loneliness, the emptiness of dreams. He had accepted a lot of -them in his time. Yet he made no move to surrender. He looked out at -the desert and the night sky, and his eyes blazed, the desperate, -strangely beautiful eyes of a creature very close to the roots of -life, something less and more than man. His hands found a shard of rock -and broke it.</p> - -<p>The leader of the four men rode slowly toward the tor, his right arm -raised.</p> - -<p>His voice carried clearly on the wind. "Eric John Stark!" he called, -and the dark man tensed in the shadows.</p> - -<p>The rider stopped. He spoke again, but this time in a different tongue. -It was no dialect of Earth, Mars or Venus, but a strange speech, as -harsh and vital as the blazing Mercurian valleys that bred it.</p> - -<p>"<i>Oh N'Chaka, oh Man-without-a-tribe, I call you!</i>"</p> - -<p>There was a long silence. The rider and his mount were motionless under -the low moons, waiting.</p> - -<p>Eric John Stark stepped slowly out from the pool of blackness under the -tor.</p> - -<p>"Who calls me N'Chaka?"</p> - -<p>The rider relaxed somewhat. He answered in English, "You know perfectly -well who I am, Eric. May we meet in peace?"</p> - -<p>Stark shrugged. "Of course."</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>He walked on to meet the rider, who had dismounted, leaving his beast -behind. He was a slight, wiry man, this EPC officer, with the rawhide -look of the frontiers still on him. His hair was grizzled and his -sun-blackened skin was deeply lined, but there was nothing in the least -aged about his hard good-humored face nor his remarkably keen dark eyes.</p> - -<p>"It's been a long time, Eric," he said.</p> - -<p>Stark nodded. "Sixteen years." The two men studied each other for a -moment, and then Stark said, "I thought you were still on Mercury, -Ashton."</p> - -<p>"They've called all us experienced hands in to Mars." He held out -cigarettes. "Smoke?"</p> - -<p>Stark took one. They bent over Ashton's lighter, and then stood there -smoking while the wind blew red dust over their feet and the three men -of the patrol waited quietly beside the Banning. Ashton was taking no -chances. The electro-beam could stun without injury.</p> - -<p>Presently Ashton said, "I'm going to be crude, Eric. I'm going to -remind you of some things."</p> - -<p>"Save it," Stark retorted. "You've got me. There's no need to talk -about it."</p> - -<p>"Yes," said Ashton, "I've got you, and a damned hard time I've had -doing it. That's why I'm going to talk about it."</p> - -<p>His dark eyes met Stark's cold stare and held it.</p> - -<p>"Remember who I am—Simon Ashton. Remember who came along when the -miners in that valley on Mercury had a wild boy in a cage, and were -going to finish him off like they had the tribe that raised him. -Remember all the years after that, when I brought that boy up to be a -civilized human being."</p> - -<p>Stark laughed, not without a certain humor. "You should have left me in -the cage. I was caught a little old for civilizing."</p> - -<p>"Maybe. I don't think so. Anyway, I'm reminding you," Ashton said.</p> - -<p>Stark said, with no particular bitterness, "You don't have to get -sentimental. I know it's your job to take me in."</p> - -<p>Ashton said deliberately, "I won't take you in, Eric, unless you make -me." He went on then, rapidly, before Stark could answer. "You've -got a twenty-year sentence hanging over you, for running guns to the -Middle-Swamp tribes when they revolted against Terro-Venusian Metals, -and a couple of similar jobs.</p> - -<p>"All right. So I know why you did it, and I won't say I don't agree -with you. But you put yourself outside the law, and that's that. Now -you're on your way to Valkis. You're headed into a mess that'll put you -on Luna for life, the next time you're caught."</p> - -<p>"And this time you don't agree with me."</p> - -<p>"No. Why do you think I broke my neck to catch you before you got -there?" Ashton bent closer, his face very intent. "Have you made any -deal with Delgaun of Valkis? Did he send for you?"</p> - -<p>"He sent for me, but there's no deal yet. I'm on the beach. Broke. I -got a message from this Delgaun, whoever he is, that there was going to -be a private war back in the Drylands, and he'd pay me to help fight -it. After all, that's my business."</p> - -<p>Ashton shook his head.</p> - -<p>"This isn't a private war, Eric. It's something a lot bigger and -nastier than that. The Martian Council of City-States and the Earth -Commission are both in a cold sweat, and no one can find out exactly -what's going on. You know what the Low-Canal towns are—Valkis, -Jekkara, Barrakesh. No law-abiding Martian, let alone an Earthman, -can last five minutes in them. And the back-blocks are absolutely -<i>verboten</i>. So all we get is rumors.</p> - -<p>"Fantastic rumors about a barbarian chief named Kynon, who seems to be -promising heaven and earth to the tribes of Kesh and Shun—some wild -stuff about the ancient cult of the Ramas that everybody thought was -dead a thousand years ago. We know that Kynon is tied up somehow with -Delgaun, who is a most efficient bandit, and we know that some of the -top criminals of the whole System are filtering in to join up. Knighton -and Walsh of Terra, Themis of Mercury, Arrod of Callisto Colony—and, I -believe, your old comrade in arms, Luhar the Venusian."</p> - -<p>Stark gave a slight start, and Ashton smiled briefly.</p> - -<p>"Oh, yes," he said. "I heard about that." Then he sobered. "You can -figure that set-up for yourself, Eric. The barbarians are going to go -out and fight some kind of a holy war, to suit the entirely unholy -purposes of men like Delgaun and the others.</p> - -<p>"Half a world is going to be raped, blood is going to run deep in -the Drylands—and it will all be barbarian blood spilled for a lying -promise, and the carrion crows of Valkis will get fat on it. Unless, -somehow, we can stop it."</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>He paused, then said flatly, "I want you to go on to Valkis, Eric—but -as my agent. I won't put it on the grounds that you'd be doing -civilization a service. You don't owe anything to civilization, Lord -knows. But you might save a lot of your own kind of people from getting -slaughtered, to say nothing of the border-state Martians who'll be the -first to get Kynon's axe.</p> - -<p>"Also, you could wipe that twenty-year hitch on Luna off the slate, -maybe even work up a desire to make a man of yourself, instead of a -sort of tiger wandering from one kill to the next." He added, "If you -live."</p> - -<p>Stark said slowly, "You're clever Ashton. You know I've got a feeling -for all planetary primitives like those who raised me, and you appeal -to that."</p> - -<p>"Yes," said Ashton, "I'm clever. But I'm not a liar. What I've told you -is true."</p> - -<p>Stark carefully ground out the cigarette beneath his heel. Then he -looked up. "Suppose I agree to become your agent in this, and go off to -Valkis. What's to prevent me from forgetting all about you, then?"</p> - -<p>Ashton said softly, "Your word, Eric. You get to know a man pretty well -when you know him from boyhood on up. Your word is enough."</p> - -<p>There was a silence, and then Stark held out his hand. "All right, -Simon—but only for this one deal. After that, no promises."</p> - -<p>"Fair enough." They shook hands.</p> - -<p>"I can't give you any suggestions," Ashton said. "You're on your own, -completely. You can get in touch with me through the Earth Commission -office in Tarak. You know where that is?"</p> - -<p>Stark nodded. "On the Dryland Border."</p> - -<p>"Good luck to you, Eric."</p> - -<p>He turned, and they walked back together to where the three men waited. -Ashton nodded, and they began to dismantle the Banning. Neither they -nor Ashton looked back, as they rode away.</p> - -<p>Stark watched them go. He filled his lungs with the cold air, and -stretched. Then he roused the beast out of the sand. It had rested, and -was willing to carry him again as long as he did not press it. He set -off again, across the desert.</p> - -<p>The ridge grew as he approached it, looming into a low mountain chain -much worn by the ages. A pass opened before him, twisting between the -hills of barren rock.</p> - -<p>He traversed it, coming out at the farther end above the basin of -a dead sea. The lifeless land stretched away into darkness, a vast -waste of desolation more lonely even than the desert. And between the -sea bottom and the foothills, Stark saw the lights of Valkis.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p class="ph1">II</p> - -<p>There were many lights, far below. Tiny pinpricks of flame where -torches burned in the streets beside the Low-Canal—the thread of black -water that was all that remained of a forgotten ocean.</p> - -<p>Stark had never been here before. Now he looked at the city that -sprawled down the slope under the low moons, and shivered, the -primitive twitching of the nerves that an animal feels in the presence -of death.</p> - -<p>For the streets where the torches flared were only a tiny part of -Valkis. The life of the city had flowed downward from the cliff-tops, -following the dropping level of the sea. Five cities, the oldest -scarcely recognizable as a place of human habitation. Five harbors, the -docks and quays still standing, half buried in the dust.</p> - -<p>Five ages of Martian history, crowned on the topmost level with the -ruined palace of the old pirate kings of Valkis. The towers still -stood, broken but indomitable, and in the moonlight they had a sleeping -look, as though they dreamed of blue water and the sound of waves, and -of tall ships coming in heavy with treasure.</p> - -<p>Stark picked his way slowly down the steep descent. There was something -fascinating to him in the stone houses, roofless and silent in the -night. The paving blocks still showed the rutting of wheels where -carters had driven to the market-place, and princes had gone by in -gilded chariots. The quays were scarred where ships had lain against -them, rising and falling with the tides.</p> - -<p>Stark's senses had developed in a strange school, and the thin veneer -of civilization he affected had not dulled them. Now it seemed to him -that the wind had the echoes of voices in it, and the smell of spices -and fresh-spilled blood.</p> - -<p>He was not surprised when, in the last level above the living town, -armed men came out of the shadows and stopped him.</p> - -<p>They were lean, dark men, very wiry and light of foot, and their faces -were the faces of wolves—not primitive wolves at all, but beasts of -prey that had been civilized for so many thousands of years that they -could afford to forget it.</p> - -<p>They were most courteous, and Stark would not have cared to disobey -their request.</p> - -<p>He gave his name. "Delgaun sent for me."</p> - -<p>The leader of the Valkisians nodded his narrow head. "You're expected." -His sharp eyes had taken in every feature of the Earthman, and Stark -knew that his description had been memorized down to the last detail. -Valkis guarded its doors with care.</p> - -<p>"Ask in the city," said the sentry. "Anyone can direct you to the -palace."</p> - -<p>Stark nodded and went on, down through the long-dead streets in the -moonlight and the silence.</p> - -<p>With shocking suddenness, he was plunged into the streets of the living.</p> - -<p>It was very late now, but Valkis was awake and stirring. Seething, -rather. The narrow twisting ways were crowded. The laughter of women -came down from the flat roofs. Torchlight flared, gold and scarlet, -lighting the wineshops, making blacker the shadows of the alley-mouths.</p> - -<p>Stark left his beast at a <i>serai</i> on the edge of the canal. The -paddocks were already jammed. Stark recognized the long-legged brutes -of the Dryland breed, and as he left a caravan passed him, coming in, -with a jangling of bronze bangles and a great hissing and stamping in -the dust.</p> - -<p>The riders were tall barbarians—Keshi, Stark thought, from the way -they braided their tawny hair. They wore plain leather, and their -blue-eyed women rode like queens.</p> - -<p>Valkis was full of them. For days, it seemed, they must have poured -in across the dead sea bottom, from the distant oases and the barren -deserts of the back-blocks. Brawny warriors of Kesh and Shun, making -holiday beside the Low-Canal, where there was more water than any of -them had seen in their lives.</p> - -<p>They were in Valkis, these barbarians, but they were not part of it. -Shouldering his way through the streets, Stark got the peculiar flavor -of the town, that he guessed could never be touched or changed by -anything.</p> - -<p>In a square, a girl danced to the music of harp and drum. The air was -heavy with the smell of wine and burning pitch and incense. A lithe, -swart Valkisian in his bright kilt and jewelled girdle leaped out and -danced with the girl, his teeth flashing as he whirled and postured. In -the end he bore her off, laughing, her black hair hanging down his back.</p> - -<p>Women looked at Stark. Women graceful as cats, bare to the waist, their -skirts slit at the sides above the thigh, wearing no ornaments but the -tiny golden bells that are the particular property of the Low-Canal -towns, so that the air is always filled with their delicate, wanton -chiming.</p> - -<p>Valkis had a laughing, wicked soul. Stark had been in many places in -his life, but never one before that beat with such a pulse of evil, -incredibly ancient, but strong and gay.</p> - -<p>He found the palace at last—a great rambling structure of quarried -stone, with doors and shutters of beaten bronze closed against the dust -and the incessant wind. He gave his name to the guard and was taken -inside, through halls hung with antique tapestries, the flagged floors -worn hollow by countless generations of sandalled feet.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Again, Stark's half-wild senses told him that life within these walls -had not been placid. The very stones whispered of age-old violence, the -shadows were heavy with the lingering ghosts of passion.</p> - -<p>He was brought before Delgaun, the lord of Valkis, in the big central -room that served as his headquarters.</p> - -<p>Delgaun was lean and catlike, after the fashion of his race. His black -hair showed a stippling of silver, and the hard beauty of his face was -strongly marked, the lines drawn deep and all the softness of youth -long gone away. He wore a magnificent harness, and his eyes, under fine -dark brows, were like drops of hot gold.</p> - -<p>He looked up as the Earthman came in, one swift penetrating glance. -Then he said, "You're Stark."</p> - -<p>There was something odd about those yellow eyes, bright and keen as a -killer hawk's yet somehow secret, as though the true thoughts behind -them would never show through. Instinctively, Stark disliked the man.</p> - -<p>But he nodded and came up to the council table, turning his attention -to the others in the room. A handful of Martians—Low-Canallers, chiefs -and fighting men from their ornaments and their proud looks—and -several outlanders, their conventional garments incongruous in this -place.</p> - -<p>Stark knew them all. Knighton and Walsh of Terra, Themis of Mercury, -Arrod of Callisto Colony—and Luhar of Venus. Pirates, thieves, -renegades, and each one an expert in his line.</p> - -<p>Ashton was right. There was something big, something very big and very -ugly, shaping between Valkis and the Drylands.</p> - -<p>But that was only a quick, passing thought in Stark's mind. It was on -Luhar that his attention centered. Bitter memory and hatred had come to -savage life within him as soon as he saw the Venusian.</p> - -<p>The man was handsome. A cashiered officer of the crack Venusian Guards, -very slim, very elegant, his pale hair cropped short and curling, his -dark tunic fitting him like a second skin.</p> - -<p>He said, "The aborigine! I thought we had enough barbarians here -without sending for more."</p> - -<p>Stark said nothing. He began to walk toward Luhar.</p> - -<p>Luhar said sharply, "There's no use in getting nasty, Stark. Past -scores are past. We're on the same side now."</p> - -<p>The Earthman spoke, then, with a peculiar gentleness.</p> - -<p>"We were on the same side once before. Against Terro-Venus Metals. -Remember?"</p> - -<p>"I remember very well!" Luhar was speaking now not to Stark alone, -but to everyone in the room. "I remember that your innocent barbarian -friends had me tied to the block there in the swamps, and that you -were watching the whole thing with honest pleasure. If the Company men -hadn't come along, I'd be screaming there yet."</p> - -<p>"You sold us out," Stark said. "You had it coming."</p> - -<p>He continued to walk toward Luhar.</p> - -<p>Delgaun spoke. He did not raise his voice, yet Stark felt the impact of -his command.</p> - -<p>"There will be no fighting here," Delgaun said. "You are both hired -mercenaries, and while you take my pay you will forget your private -quarrels. Do you understand?"</p> - -<p>Luhar nodded and sat down, smiling out of the corner of his mouth at -Stark, who stood looking with narrowed eyes at Delgaun.</p> - -<p>He was still half blind with his anger against Luhar. His hands ached -for the kill. But even so, he recognized the power in Delgaun.</p> - -<p>A sound shockingly akin to the growl of a beast echoed in his throat. -Then, gradually, he relaxed. The man Delgaun he would have challenged. -But to do so would wreck the mission that he had promised to carry out -here for Ashton.</p> - -<p>He shrugged, and joined the others at the table.</p> - -<p>Walsh of Terra rose abruptly and began to prowl back and forth.</p> - -<p>"How much longer do we have to wait?" he demanded.</p> - -<p>Delgaun poured wine into a bronze goblet. "Don't expect me to know," he -snapped. He shoved the flagon along the table toward Stark.</p> - -<p>Stark helped himself. The wine was warm and sweet on his tongue. He -drank slowly, sitting relaxed and patient while the others smoked -nervously or rose to pace up and down.</p> - -<p>Stark wondered what, or who, they were waiting for. But he did not ask.</p> - -<p>Time went by.</p> - -<p>Stark raised his head, listening. "What's that?"</p> - -<p>Their duller ears had heard nothing, but Delgaun rose and flung open -the shutters of the window near him.</p> - -<p>The Martian dawn, brilliant and clear, flooded the dead sea bottom with -harsh light. Beyond the black line of the canal a caravan was coming -toward Valkis through the blowing dust.</p> - -<p>It was no ordinary caravan. Warriors rode before and behind, their -spearheads blazing in the sunrise. Jewelled trappings on the beasts, a -litter with curtains of crimson silk, barbaric splendor. Clear and thin -on the air came the wild music of pipes and the deep-throated throbbing -of drums.</p> - -<p>Stark guessed without being told who it was that rode out of the desert -like a king.</p> - -<p>Delgaun made a harsh sound in his throat. "It's Kynon, at last!" he -said, and swung around from the window. His eyes sparkled with some -private amusement. "Let us go and welcome the Giver of Life!"</p> - -<p>Stark went with them, out into the crowded streets. A silence had -fallen on the town. Valkisian and barbarian alike were caught now in a -breathless excitement, pressing through the narrow ways, flowing toward -the canal.</p> - -<p>Stark found himself beside Delgaun in the great square of the slave -market, standing on the auction block, above the heads of the throng. -The stillness, the expectancy of the crowd were uncanny....</p> - -<p>To the measured thunder of drums and the wild skirling of desert pipes, -Kynon of Shun came into Valkis.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p class="ph1">III</p> - -<p>Straight into the square of the slave market the caravan came, and the -people pressed back against the walls to make way for them. Stamping of -padded hoofs on the stones, ring and clash of harness, brave glitter -of spears and the great two-handed broadswords of the Drylands, with -drumbeats to shake the heart and the savage cry of the pipes to set -the blood leaping. Stark could not restrain an appreciative thrill in -himself.</p> - -<p>The advance guard reached the slave block. Then, with deafening -abruptness, the drummers crossed their sticks and the pipers ceased, -and there was utter silence in the square.</p> - -<p>It lasted for almost a minute, and then from every barbarian throat the -name of Kynon roared out until the stones of the city echoed with it.</p> - -<p>A man leaped from the back of his mount to the block, standing at its -outer edge where all could see, his hands flung up.</p> - -<p>"I greet you, my brothers!"</p> - -<p>And the cheering went on.</p> - -<p>Stark studied Kynon, surprised that he was so young. He had expected a -gray-bearded prophet, and instead, here was a brawny-shouldered man of -war standing as tall as himself.</p> - -<p>Kynon's eyes were a bright, compelling blue, and his face was the face -of a young eagle. His voice had deep music in it—the kind of voice -that can sway crowds to madness.</p> - -<p>Stark looked from him to the rapt faces of the people—even the -Valkisians had caught the mood—and thought that Kynon was the most -dangerous man he had ever seen. This tawny-haired barbarian in his kilt -of bronze-bossed leather was already half a god.</p> - -<p>Kynon shouted to the captain of his warriors, "Bring the captive -and the old man!" Then he turned again to the crowd, urging them -to silence. When at last the square was still, his voice rang -challengingly across it.</p> - -<p>"There are still those who doubt me. Therefore I have come to Valkis, -and this day—now!—I will show proof that I have not lied!"</p> - -<p>A roar and a mutter from the crowd. Kynon's men were lifting to the -block a tottering ancient so bowed with years that he could barely -stand, and a youth of Terran stock. The boy was in chains. The old -man's eyes burned, and he looked at the boy beside him with a terrible -joy.</p> - -<p>Stark settled down to watch. The litter with the curtains of crimson -silk was now beside the block. A girl, a Valkisian, stood beside it, -looking up. It seemed to Stark that her green eyes rested on Kynon with -a smouldering anger.</p> - -<p>He glanced away from the serving girl, and saw that the curtains were -partly open. A woman lay on the cushions within. He could not see much -of her, except that her hair was like dark flame and she was smiling, -looking at the old man and the naked boy. Then her glance, very dark in -the shadows of the litter, shifted away and Stark followed it and saw -Delgaun. Every muscle of Delgaun's body was drawn taut, and he seemed -unable to look away from the woman in the litter.</p> - -<p>Stark smiled, very slightly. The outlanders were cynically absorbed -in what was going on. The crowd had settled again to that silent, -breathless tension. The sun blazed down out of the empty sky. The dust -blew, and the wind was sharp with the smell of living flesh.</p> - -<p>The old man reached out and touched the boy's smooth shoulder, and his -gums showed bluish as he laughed.</p> - -<p>Kynon was speaking again.</p> - -<p>"There are still those who doubt me, I say! Those who scoffed when I -said that I possessed the ancient secret of the Ramas of long ago—the -secret by which one man's mind may be transferred into another's body. -But none of you after today will doubt that I hold that secret!</p> - -<p>"I, myself, am not a Rama." He glanced down along his powerful frame, -half-consciously flexing his muscles, and laughed. "Why should I be a -Rama? I have no need, as yet, for the Sending-on of Minds!"</p> - -<p>Answering laughter, half ribald, from the crowd.</p> - -<p>"No," said Kynon, "I am not a Rama. I am a man like you. Like you, I -have no wish to grow old, and in the end, to die."</p> - -<p>He swung abruptly to the old man.</p> - -<p>"You, Grandfather! Would you not wish to be young again—to ride out to -battle, to take the woman of your choice?"</p> - -<p>The old man wailed, "Yes! Yes!" and his gaze dwelt hungrily upon the -boy.</p> - -<p>"And you shall be!" The strength of a god rang in Kynon's voice. He -turned again to the crowd and cried out,</p> - -<p>"For years I suffered in the desert alone, searching for the lost -secret of the Ramas. And I found it, my brothers! I hold their ancient -power. I alone—in these two hands I hold it, and with it I shall begin -a new era for our Dryland races!</p> - -<p>"There will be fighting, yes. There will be bloodshed. But when that is -over and the men of Kesh and Shun are free from their ancient bondage -of thirst and the men of the Low-Canals have regained their own—then -I shall give new life, unending life, to all who have followed me. -The aged and lamed and wounded can choose new bodies from among the -captives. There will be no more age, no more sickness, no more death!"</p> - -<p>A rippling, shivering sigh from the crowd. Eyeballs gleaming in the -bitter light, mouths open on the hunger that is nearest to the human -soul.</p> - -<p>"Lest anyone still doubt my promise," said Kynon, "watch. Watch—and I -will show you!"</p> - -<p>They watched. Not stirring, hardly breathing, they watched.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>The drums struck up a slow and solemn beat. The captain of the -warriors, with an escort of six men, marched to the litter and took -from the woman's hands a bundle wrapped in silks. Bearing it as though -it were precious beyond belief, he came to the block and lifted it up, -and Kynon took it from him.</p> - -<p>The silken wrappings fluttered loose, fell away. And in Kynon's hands -gleamed two crystal crowns and a shining rod.</p> - -<p>He held them high, the sunlight glancing in cold fire from the crystal.</p> - -<p>"Behold!" he said. "The Crowns of the Ramas!"</p> - -<p>The crowd drew breath then, one long rasping <i>Ah!</i></p> - -<p>The solemn drumbeat never faltered. It was as though the pulse of -the whole world throbbed within it. Kynon turned. The old man began -to tremble. Kynon placed one crown on his wrinkled scalp, and the -tottering creature winced as though in pain, but his face was ecstatic.</p> - -<p>Relentlessly, Kynon crowned with the second circlet the head of the -frightened boy.</p> - -<p>"Kneel," he said.</p> - -<p>They knelt. Standing tall above them, Kynon held the rod in his two -hands, between the crystal crowns.</p> - -<p>Light was born in the rod. It was no reflection of the sun. Blue and -brilliant, it flashed along the rod and leaped from it to wake an -answering brilliance in the crowns, so that the old man and the youth -were haloed with a chill, supernal fire.</p> - -<p>The drumbeat ceased. The old man cried out. His hands plucked feebly at -his head, then went to his breast and clenched there. Quite suddenly -he fell forward over his knees. A convulsive tremor shook him. Then he -lay still.</p> - -<p>The boy swayed and then fell forward also, with a clashing of chains.</p> - -<p>The light died out of the crowns. Kynon stood a moment longer, rigid as -a statue, holding the rod which still flickered with blue lightning. -Then that also died.</p> - -<p>Kynon lowered the rod. In a ringing voice he cried, "Arise, -Grandfather!"</p> - -<p>The boy stirred. Slowly, very slowly, he rose to his feet. Holding out -his hands, he stared at them, and then touched his thighs, and his flat -belly, and the deep curve of his chest.</p> - -<p>Up the firm young throat the wondering fingers went, to the smooth -cheeks, to the thick fair hair above the crown. A cry broke from him.</p> - -<p>With the perfect accent of the Drylands, the Earth boy cried in -Martian, "I am in the youth's body! I am young again!"</p> - -<p>A scream, a wail of ecstasy, burst from the crowd. It swayed like a -great beast, white faces turned upward. The boy fell down and embraced -Kynon's knees.</p> - -<p>Eric John Stark found that he himself was trembling slightly. He -glanced at Delgaun and the outlanders. The Valkisian wore a look of -intense satisfaction under his mask of awe. The others were almost as -rapt and open-mouthed as the crowd.</p> - -<p>Stark turned his head slightly and looked down at the litter. One -white hand was already drawing the curtains, so that the scarlet silk -appeared to shake with silent laughter.</p> - -<p>The serving girl beside it had not moved. Still she looked up at Kynon, -and there was nothing in her eyes but hate.</p> - -<p>After that there was bedlam, the rush and trample of the crowd, the -beating of drums, the screaming of pipes, deafening uproar. The crowns -and the crystal rod were wrapped again and taken away. Kynon raised up -the boy and struck off the chains of captivity. He mounted, with the -boy beside him. Delgaun walked before him through the streets, and so -did the outlanders.</p> - -<p>The body of the old man was disregarded, except by some of Kynon's -barbarians who wrapped it in a white cloth and took it away.</p> - -<p>Kynon of Shun came in triumph to Delgaun's palace. Standing beside -the litter, he gave his hand to the woman, who stepped out and walked -beside him through the bronze door.</p> - -<p>The women of Shun are tall and strong, bred to stand beside their men -in war as well as love, and this red-haired daughter of the Drylands -was enough to stop a man's heart with her proud step and her white -shoulders, and her eyes that were the color of smoke. Stark's gaze -followed her from a distance.</p> - -<p>Presently in the council room were gathered Delgaun and the outlanders, -Kynon and his bright-haired queen—and no other Martians but those -three.</p> - -<p>Kynon sprawled out in the high seat at the head of the table. His face -was beaming. He wiped the sweat off it, and then filled a goblet with -wine, looking around the room with his bright blue eyes.</p> - -<p>"Fill up, gentlemen. I'll give you a toast." He lifted the goblet. -"Here's to the secret of the Ramas, and the gift of life!"</p> - -<p>Stark put down his goblet, still empty. He stared directly at Kynon.</p> - -<p>"You have no secret," said Stark deliberately.</p> - -<p>Kynon sat perfectly still, except that, very slowly, he put his own -goblet down. Nobody else moved.</p> - -<p>Stark's voice sounded loud in the stillness.</p> - -<p>"Furthermore," he said, "that demonstration in the square was a lie -from beginning to end."</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p class="ph1">IV</p> - -<p>Stark's words had the effect of an electric shock on the listeners. -Delgaun's black brows went up, and the woman came forward a little to -stare at the Earthman with profound interest.</p> - -<p>Kynon asked a question, of nobody in particular. "Who," he demanded, -"is this great black ape?"</p> - -<p>Delgaun told him.</p> - -<p>"Ah, yes," said Kynon. "Eric John Stark, the wild man from Mercury." He -scowled threateningly. "Very well—explain how I lied in the square!"</p> - -<p>"Certainly. First of all, the Earth boy was a prisoner. He was told -what he had to do to save his neck, and then was carefully coached in -his part. Secondly, the crystal rod and the crowns are a fake. You -used a simple Purcell unit in the rod to produce an electronic brush -discharge. That made the blue light. Thirdly, you gave the old man -poison, probably by means of a sharp point on the crown. I saw him -wince when you put it on him."</p> - -<p>Stark paused. "The old man died. The boy went through his sham. And -that was that."</p> - -<p>Again there was a flat silence. Luhar crouched over the table, his face -avid with hope. The woman's eyes dwelt on Stark and did not turn away.</p> - -<p>Then, suddenly, Kynon laughed. He roared with it until the tears ran.</p> - -<p>"It was a good show, though," he said at last. "Damned good. You'll -have to admit that. The crowd swallowed it, horns, hoofs and hide."</p> - -<p>He got up and came round to Stark, clapping him on the shoulder, a blow -that would have laid a lesser man flat.</p> - -<p>"I like you, wild man. Nobody else here had the guts to speak out, but -I'll give you odds they were all thinking the same thing."</p> - -<p>Stark said, "Just where were you, Kynon, during those years you were -supposed to be suffering alone in the desert?"</p> - -<p>"Curious, aren't you? Well, I'll let you in on a secret." Kynon lapsed -abruptly into perfectly good colloquial English. "I was on Terra, -learning about things like the Purcell electronic discharge."</p> - -<p>Reaching over, he poured wine for Stark and held it out to him. "Now -you know. Now we all know. So let's wash the dust out of our throats -and get down to business."</p> - -<p>Stark said, "No."</p> - -<p>Kynon looked at him. "What now?"</p> - -<p>"You're lying to your people," Stark said flatly. "You're making false -promises, to lead them into war."</p> - -<p>Kynon was genuinely puzzled by Stark's anger. "But of course!" he -said. "Is there anything new or strange in that?"</p> - -<p>Luhar spoke up, his voice acid with hate. "Watch out for him, Kynon. -He'll sell you out, he'll cut your throat, if he thinks it best for the -barbarians."</p> - -<p>Delgaun said, "Stark's reputation is known all over the system. There's -no need to tell us that again."</p> - -<p>"No." Kynon shook his head, looking very candidly at Stark. "We sent -for you, didn't we, knowing that? All right."</p> - -<p>He stepped back a little, so that the others were included in what he -was going to say.</p> - -<p>"My people have a just cause for war. They go hungry and thirsty, while -the City-States along the Dryland Border hog all the water sources and -grow fat. Do you know what it means to watch your children die crying -for water on a long march, to come at last to the oasis and find the -well sanded in by a storm, and go on again, trying to save your people -and your herd? Well, I do! I was born and bred in the Drylands, and -many a time I've cursed the border states with a tongue like a dry -stick.</p> - -<p>"Stark, you should know the workings of the barbarian mind as well -as I do. The men of Kesh and Shun are traditional enemies. Raiding -and thieving, open warfare over water and grass. I had to give them a -rallying point—a faith strong enough to unite them. Resurrecting the -Rama legend was the only hope I had.</p> - -<p>"And it has worked. The tribes are one people now. They can go on and -take what belongs to them—the right to live. I'm not really so far out -in my promises, at that. Now do you understand?"</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Stark studied him, with his cold cat-eyes. "Where do the men of Valkis -come in—the men of Jekkara and Barrakesh? Where do <i>we</i> come in, the -hired bravoes?"</p> - -<p>Kynon smiled. It was a perfectly sincere smile, and it had no humor in -it, only a great pride and a cheerful cruelty.</p> - -<p>"We're going to build an empire," he said softly. "The City-States are -disorganized, too starved or too fat to fight. And Earth is taking us -over. Before long, Mars will be hardly more than another Luna.</p> - -<p>"We're going to fight that. Drylander and Low-Canaller together, we're -going to build a power out of dust and blood—and there will be loot in -plenty to go round."</p> - -<p>"That's where my men come in," said Delgaun, and laughed. "We -Low-Canallers live by rapine."</p> - -<p>"And you," said Kynon, "the 'hired bravoes', are in it to help. I -need you and the Venusian, Stark, to train my men, to plan campaigns, -to give me all you know of guerrilla fighting. Knighton has a fast -cruiser. He'll bring us supplies from outside. Walsh is a genius, they -tell me, at fashioning weapons. Themis is a mechanic, and also the -cleverest thief this side of hell—saving your presence, Delgaun! Arrod -organized and bossed the Brotherhood of the Little Worlds, which had -the Space Patrol going mad for years. He can do the same for us. So -there you have it. Now, Stark, what do you say?"</p> - -<p>The Earthman answered slowly, "I'll go along with you—as long as no -harm comes to the tribes."</p> - -<p>Kynon laughed. "No need to worry about that."</p> - -<p>"Just one more question," Stark said. "What's going to happen when the -people find out that this Rama stuff is just a myth?"</p> - -<p>"They won't," said Kynon. "The crowns will be destroyed in battle, and -it will be very tragic, but very final. No one knows how to make more -of them. Oh, I can handle the people! They'll be happy enough, with -good land and water."</p> - -<p>He looked around then and said plaintively, "And now can we sit down -and drink like civilized men?"</p> - -<p>They sat. The wine went round, and the vultures of Valkis drank to each -other's luck and loot, and Stark learned that the woman's name was -Berild.</p> - -<p>Kynon was happy. He had made his point with the people, and he was -celebrating. But Stark noticed that though his tongue grew thick, it -did not loosen.</p> - -<p>Luhar grew steadily more morose and silent, glancing covertly across -the table at Stark. Delgaun toyed with his goblet, and his yellow gaze -which gave nothing away moved restlessly between Berild and Stark.</p> - -<p>Berild drank not at all. She sat a little apart, with her face in -shadow, and her red mouth smiled. Her thoughts, too, were her own -secret. But Stark knew that she was still watching him, and he knew -that Delgaun was aware of it.</p> - -<p>Presently Kynon said, "Delgaun and I have some talking to do, so I'll -bid you gentlemen farewell for the present. You, Stark, and Luhar—I'm -going back into the desert at midnight, and you're going with me, so -you'd better get some sleep."</p> - -<p>Stark nodded. He rose and went out, with the others.</p> - -<p>An attendant showed him to his quarters, in the north wing. Stark had -not rested for twenty-four hours, and he was glad of the chance to -sleep.</p> - -<p>He lay down. The wine spun in his head, and Berild's smile mocked him. -Then his thoughts turned to Ashton, and his promise. Presently he -slept, and dreamed.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>He was a boy on Mercury again, running down a path that led from a cave -mouth to the floor of a valley. Above him the mountains rose into the -sky and were lost beyond the shallow atmosphere. The rocks danced in -the terrible heat, but the soles of his feet were like iron, and trod -them lightly. He was quite naked.</p> - -<p>The blaze of the sun between the valley walls was like the shining -heart of Hell. It did not seem to the boy N'Chaka that it could ever be -cold again, yet he knew that when darkness came there would be ice on -the shallows of the river. The gods were constantly at war.</p> - -<p>He passed a place, ruined by earthquake. It was a mine, and N'Chaka -remembered dimly that he had once lived there, with several -white-skinned creatures shaped like himself. He went on without a -second glance.</p> - -<p>He was searching for Tika. When he was old enough, he would mate with -her. He wanted to hunt with her now, for she was fleet and as keen as -he at scenting out the great lizards.</p> - -<p>He heard her voice calling his name. There was terror in it, and -N'Chaka began to run. He saw her, crouched between two huge boulders, -her light fur stained with blood.</p> - -<p>A vast black-winged shadow swooped down upon him. It glared at him with -its yellow eyes, and its long beak tore at him. He thrust his spear at -it, but talons hooked into his shoulder, and the golden eyes were close -to him, bright and full of death.</p> - -<p>He knew those eyes. Tika screamed, but the sound faded, everything -faded but those eyes. He sprang up, grappling with the thing....</p> - -<p>A man's voice yelling, a man's hands thrusting him away. The dream -receded. Stark came back to reality, dropping the scared attendant who -had come to waken him.</p> - -<p>The man cringed away from him. "Delgaun sent me. He wants you—in the -council room." Then he turned and fled.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Stark shook himself. The dream had been terribly real. He went down to -the council room. It was dusk now, and the torches were lighted.</p> - -<p>Delgaun was waiting, and Berild sat beside him at the table. They were -alone there. Delgaun looked up, with his golden eyes.</p> - -<p>"I have a job for you, Stark," he said. "You remember the captain of -Kynon's men, in the square today?"</p> - -<p>"I do."</p> - -<p>"His name is Freka, and he's a good man, but he's addicted to a certain -vice. He'll be up to his ears in it by now, and somebody has to get him -back by the time Kynon leaves. Will you see to it?"</p> - -<p>Stark glanced at Berild. It seemed to him that she was amused, whether -at him or at Delgaun he could not tell. He asked,</p> - -<p>"Where will I find him?"</p> - -<p>"There's only one place where he can get his particular poison—Kala's, -out on the edge of Valkis. It's in the old city, beyond the lower -quays." Delgaun smiled. "You may have to be ready with your fists, -Stark. Freka may not want to come."</p> - -<p>Stark hesitated. Then, "I'll do my best," he said, and went out into -the dusky streets of Valkis.</p> - -<p>He crossed a square, heading away from the palace. A twisting lane -swallowed him up. And quite suddenly, someone took his arm and said -rapidly,</p> - -<p>"Smile at me, and then turn aside into the alley."</p> - -<p>The hand on his arm was small and brown, the voice very pretty with its -accompaniment of little chiming bells. He smiled, as she had bade him, -and turned aside into the alley, which was barely more than a crack -between two rows of houses.</p> - -<p>Swiftly, he put his hands against the wall, so that the girl was -prisoned between them. A green-eyed girl, with golden bells braided in -her black hair, and impudent breasts bare above a jewelled girdle. A -handsome girl, with a proud look to her.</p> - -<p>The serving girl who had stood beside the litter in the square, and had -watched Kynon with such bleak hatred.</p> - -<p>"Well," said Stark. "And what do you want with me, little one?"</p> - -<p>She answered, "My name is Fianna. And I do not intend to kill you, -neither will I run away."</p> - -<p>Stark let his hands drop. "Did you follow me, Fianna?"</p> - -<p>"I did. Delgaun's palace is full of hidden ways, and I know them all. I -was listening behind the panel in the council room. I heard you speak -out against Kynon, and I heard Delgaun's order, just now."</p> - -<p>"So?"</p> - -<p>"So, if you meant what you said about the tribes, you had better -get away now, while you have the chance. Kynon lied to you. He will -use you, and then kill you, as he will use and then destroy his own -people." Her voice was hot with bitter fury.</p> - -<p>Stark gave her a slow smile that might have meant anything, or nothing.</p> - -<p>"You're a Valkisian, Fianna. What do you care what happens to the -barbarians?"</p> - -<p>Her slightly tilted green eyes looked scornfully into his.</p> - -<p>"I'm not trying to trap you, Earthman. I hate Kynon. And my mother was -a woman of the desert."</p> - -<p>She paused, then went on sombrely, "Also, I serve the lady Berild, and -I have learned many things. There is trouble coming, greater trouble -than Kynon knows." She asked, suddenly, "What do you know of the -Ramas?"</p> - -<p>"Nothing," he answered, "except that they don't exist now, if they ever -did."</p> - -<p>Fianna gave him an odd look. "Perhaps they don't. Will you listen to -me, Earthman from Mercury? Will you get away, now that you know you're -marked for death?"</p> - -<p>Stark said, "No."</p> - -<p>"Even if I tell you that Delgaun has set a trap for you at Kala's?"</p> - -<p>"No. But I will thank you for your warning, Fianna."</p> - -<p>He bent and kissed her, because she was very young and honest. Then he -turned and went on his way.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p class="ph1">V</p> - -<p>Night came swiftly. Stark left behind him the torches and the laughter -and the sounding harps, coming into the streets of the old city where -there was nothing but silence and the light of the low moons.</p> - -<p>He saw the lower quays, great looming shapes of marble rounded and worn -by time, and went toward them. Presently he found that he was following -a faint but definite path, threaded between the ancient houses. It was -very still, so that the dry whisper of the drifting dust was audible.</p> - -<p>He passed under the shadow of the quays, and turned into a broad way -that had once led up from the harbor. A little way ahead, on the other -side, he saw a tall building half fallen in ruin. Its windows were -shuttered, barred with light, and from it came the sound of voices and -a thin thread of music, very reedy and evil.</p> - -<p>Stark approached it, slipping through the ragged shadows as though he -had no more weight to him than a drift of smoke. Once a door banged and -a man came out of Kala's and passed by, going down to Valkis. Stark saw -his face in the moonlight. It was the face of a beast, rather than a -man. He muttered to himself as he went, and once he laughed, and Stark -felt a loathing in him.</p> - -<p>He waited until the sound of footsteps had died away. The ruined -houses gave no sign of danger. A lizard rustled between the stones, and -that was all. The moonlight lay bright and still on Kala's door.</p> - -<p>Stark found a little shard of rock and tossed it, so that it made a -sharp snicking sound against the shadowed wall beyond him. Then he held -his breath, listening.</p> - -<p>No one, nothing, stirred. Only the dry wind sighed in the empty houses.</p> - -<p>Stark went out, across the open space, and nothing happened. He flung -open the door of Kala's dive.</p> - -<p>Yellow light spilled out, and a choking wave of hot and stuffy air. -Inside, there were tall lamps with quartz lenses, each of which poured -down a beam of throbbing, gold-orange light. And in the little pools of -radiance, on filthy furs and cushions on the floor, lay men and women -whose faces were slack and bestial.</p> - -<p>Stark realized now what secret vice Kala sold here. Shanga—the -going-back—the radiation that caused temporary artificial atavism and -let men wallow for a time in beasthood. It was supposed to have been -stamped out when the Lady Fand's dark Shanga ring had been destroyed. -But it still persisted, in places like this outside the law.</p> - -<p>He looked for Freka, and recognized the tall barbarian. He was sprawled -under one of the Shanga-lamps, eyes closed, face brutish, growling and -twitching in sleep like the beast he had temporarily become.</p> - -<p>A voice spoke from behind Stark's shoulder. "I am Kala. What do you -wish, Outlander?"</p> - -<p>He turned. Kala might have been beautiful once, a thousand years ago as -you reckon sin. She wore still the sweet chiming bells in her hair, and -Stark thought of Fianna. The woman's ravaged face turned him sick. It -was like the reedy, piping music, woven out of the very heart of evil.</p> - -<p>Yet her eyes were shrewd, and he knew that she had not missed his -searching look around the room, nor his interest in Freka. There was a -note of warning in her voice.</p> - -<p>He did not want trouble, yet. Not until he found some hint of the trap -Fianna had told him of.</p> - -<p>He said, "Bring me wine."</p> - -<p>"Will you try the lamp of Going-back, Outlander? It brings much joy."</p> - -<p>"Perhaps later. Now, I wish wine."</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>She went away, clapping her hands for a slatternly wench who came -between the sprawled figures with an earthen mug. Stark sat down beside -a table, where his back was to the wall and he could see both the door -and the whole room.</p> - -<p>Kala had returned to her own heap of furs by the door, but her basilisk -eyes were alert.</p> - -<p>Stark made a pretence of drinking, but his mind was very busy, very -cold.</p> - -<p>Perhaps this, in itself, was the trap. Freka was temporarily a beast. -He would fight, and Kala would shriek, and the other dull-eyed brutes -would rise and fight also.</p> - -<p>But he would have needed no warning about that—and Delgaun himself had -said there would be trouble.</p> - -<p>No. There was something more.</p> - -<p>He let his gaze wander over the room. It was large, and there were -other rooms off of it, the openings hung with ragged curtains. Through -the rents, Stark could see others of Kala's customers sprawled under -Shanga-lamps, and some of these had gone so far back from humanity that -they were hideous to behold. But still there was no sign of danger to -himself.</p> - -<p>There was only one odd thing. The room nearest to where Freka sat was -empty, and its curtains were only partly drawn.</p> - -<p>Stark began to brood on the emptiness of that room.</p> - -<p>He beckoned Kala to him. "I will try the lamp," he said. "But I wish -privacy. Have it brought to that room, there."</p> - -<p>Kala said, "That room is taken."</p> - -<p>"But I see no one!"</p> - -<p>"It is taken, it is paid for, and no one may enter. I will have your -lamp brought here."</p> - -<p>"No," said Stark. "The hell with it. I'm going."</p> - -<p>He flung down a coin and went out. Moving swiftly outside, he placed -his eye to a crack in the nearest shutter, and waited.</p> - -<p>Luhar of Venus came out of the empty room. His face was worried, and -Stark smiled. He went back and stood flat against the wall beside the -door.</p> - -<p>In a moment it opened and the Venusian came out, drawing his gun as he -did so.</p> - -<p>Stark jumped him.</p> - -<p>Luhar let out one angry cry. His gun went off a vicious streak of flame -across the moonlight, and then Stark's great hand crushed the bones -of his wrist together so that he dropped it clashing on the stones. -He whirled around, raking Stark's face with his nails as he clawed -for the Earthman's eyes, and Stark hit him. Luhar fell, rolling over, -and before he could scramble up again Stark had picked up the gun and -thrown it away into the ruins across the street.</p> - -<p>Luhar came up from the pavement in one catlike spring. Stark fell with -him, back through Kala's door, and they rolled together among the foul -furs and cushions. Luhar was built of spring steel, with no softness in -him anywhere, and his long fingers were locked around Stark's throat.</p> - -<p>Kala screamed with fury. She caught a whip from among her cushions—a -traditional weapon along the Low-Canals—and began to lash the two men -impartially, her hair flying in tangled locks across her face. The -bestial figures under the lamps shambled to their feet, and growled.</p> - -<p>The long lash ripped Stark's shirt and the flesh of his back beneath -it. He snarled and staggered to his feet, with Luhar still clinging to -the death grip on his throat. He pushed Luhar's face away from him with -both hands and threw himself forward, over a table, so that Luhar was -crushed beneath him.</p> - -<p>The Venusian's breath left him with a whistling grunt. His fingers -relaxed. Stark struck his hands away. He rose and bent over Luhar and -picked him up, gripping him cruelly so that he turned white with the -pain, and raised him high and flung him bodily into the growling, -beast-faced men who were shambling toward him.</p> - -<p>Kala leaped at Stark, cursing, striking him with the coiling lash. -He turned. The thin veneer of civilization was gone from Stark now, -erased in a second by the first hint of battle. His eyes blazed with -a cold light. He took the whip out of Kala's hand and laid his palm -across her evil face, and she fell and lay still.</p> - -<p>He faced the ring of bestial, Shanga-sodden men who walled him off from -what he had been sent to do. There was a reddish tinge to his vision, -partly blood, partly sheer rage. He could see Freka standing erect in -the corner, his head weaving from side to side brutishly.</p> - -<p>Stark raised the whip and strode into the ring of men who were no -longer quite men.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Hands struck and clawed him. Bodies reeled and fell away. Blank eyes -glittered, and red mouths squealed, and there was a mingling of snarls -and bestial laughter in his ears. The blood-lust had spread to these -creatures now. They swarmed upon Stark and bore him down with the -weight of their writhing bodies.</p> - -<p>They bit him and savaged him in a blind way, and he fought his way up -again, shaking them off with his great shoulders, trampling them under -his boots. The lash hissed and sang, and the smell of blood rose on the -choking air.</p> - -<p>Freka's dazed, brutish face swam before Stark. The Martian growled and -flung himself forward. Stark swung the loaded butt of the whip. It -cracked solidly on the Shunni's temple, and he sagged into Stark's arms.</p> - -<p>Out of the corner of his eyes, Stark saw Luhar. He had risen and crept -around the edge of the fight. He was behind Stark now, and there was a -knife in his hand.</p> - -<p>Hampered by Freka's weight, Stark could not leap aside. As Luhar rushed -in, he crouched and went backward, his head and shoulders taking the -Venusian low in the belly. He felt the hot kiss of the blade in his -flesh, but the wound was glancing, and before Luhar could strike again, -Stark twisted like a great cat and struck down. Luhar's skull rang on -the flagging. The Earthman's fist rose and fell twice. After that, -Luhar did not move.</p> - -<p>Stark got to his feet. He stood with his knees bent and his shoulders -flexed, looking from side to side, and the sound that came out of his -throat was one of pure savagery.</p> - -<p>He moved forward a step or two, half naked, bleeding, towering like a -dark colossus over the lean Martians, and the brutish throng gave back -from him. They had taken more mauling than they liked, and there was -something about the Outlander's simple desire to rend them apart that -penetrated even their Shanga-clouded minds.</p> - -<p>Kala sat up on the floor, and snarled, "Get out."</p> - -<p>Stark stood a moment or two longer, looking at them. Then he lifted -Freka to his feet and laid him over his shoulder like a sack of meal -and went out, moving neither fast nor slow, but in a straight line, and -way was made for him.</p> - -<p>He carried the Shunni down through the silent streets, and into the -twisting, crowded ways of Valkis. There, too, the people stared at him -and drew back, out of his path. He came to Delgaun's palace. The guards -closed in behind him, but they did not ask that he stop.</p> - -<p>Delgaun was in the council room, and Berild was still with him. It -seemed that they had been waiting, over their wine and their private -talk. Delgaun rose to his feet as Stark came in, so sharply that his -goblet fell and spilled a red pool of wine at his feet.</p> - -<p>Stark let the Shunni drop to the floor.</p> - -<p>"I have brought Freka," he said. "Luhar is still at Kala's."</p> - -<p>He looked into Delgaun's eyes, golden and cruel, the eyes of his dream. -It was hard not to kill.</p> - -<p>Suddenly the woman laughed, very clear and ringing, and her laughter -was all for Delgaun.</p> - -<p>"Well done, wild man," she said to Stark. "Kynon is lucky to have such -a captain. One word for the future, though—watch out for Freka. He -won't forgive you this."</p> - -<p>Stark said thickly, looking at Delgaun, "This hasn't been a night for -forgiveness." Then he added, "I can handle Freka."</p> - -<p>Berild said, "I like you, wild man." Her eyes dwelt on Stark's face, -curious, compelling. "Ride beside me when we go. I would know more -about you."</p> - -<p>And she smiled.</p> - -<p>A dark flush crept over Delgaun's face. In a voice tight with fury he -said, "Perhaps you've forgotten something, Berild. There is nothing for -you in this barbarian, this creature of an hour!"</p> - -<p>He would have said more in his anger, but Berild said sharply,</p> - -<p>"We will not speak of time. Go now, Stark. Be ready at midnight."</p> - -<p>Stark went. And as he went, his brow was furrowed deep by a strange -doubt.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p class="ph1">VI</p> - -<p>At midnight, in the great square of the slave market, Kynon's caravan -formed again and went out of Valkis with thundering drums and skirling -pipes. Delgaun was there to see them go, and the cheering of the people -rang after them on the desert wind.</p> - -<p>Stark rode alone. He was in a brooding mood and wanted no company, -least of all that of the Lady Berild. She was beautiful, she was -dangerous, and she belonged to Kynon, or to Delgaun, or perhaps to both -of them. In Stark's experience, women like that were sudden death, and -he wanted no part of her. At any rate, not yet.</p> - -<p>Luhar rode ahead with Kynon. He had come dragging into the square at -the mounting, his face battered and swollen, an ugly look is his eyes. -Kynon gave one quick look from him to Stark, who had his own scars, and -said harshly,</p> - -<p>"Delgaun tells me there's a blood feud between you two. I want no more -of it, understand? After you're paid off you can kill each other and -welcome, but not until then. Is that clear?"</p> - -<p>Stark nodded, keeping his mouth shut. Luhar muttered assent, and they -had not looked at each other since.</p> - -<p>Freka rode in his customary place by Kynon, which put him near to -Luhar. It seemed to Stark that their beasts swung close together more -often than was necessary from the roughness of the track.</p> - -<p>The big barbarian captain sat rigidly erect in his saddle, but Stark -had seen his face in the torchlight, sick and sweating, with the brute -look still clouding his eyes. There was a purple mark on his temple, -but Stark was quite sure that Berild had spoken the truth—Freka would -not forgive him either the indignity or the hangover of his unfinished -wallow under the lamps of Shanga.</p> - -<p>The dead sea bottom widened away under the black sky. As they left the -lights of Valkis behind, winding their way over the sand and the ribs -of coral, dropping lower with every mile into the vast basin, it was -hard to believe that there could be life anywhere on a world that could -produce such cosmic desolation.</p> - -<p>The little moons fled away, trailing their eerie shadows over rock -formations tortured into impossible shapes by wind and water, peering -into clefts that seemed to have no bottom, turning the sand white as -bone. The iron stars blazed, so close that the wind seemed edged with -their frosty light. And in all that endless space nothing moved, and -the silence was so deep that the coughing howl of a sand-cat far away -to the east made Stark jump with its loudness.</p> - -<p>Yet Stark was not oppressed by the wilderness. Born and bred to the -wild and barren places, this desert was more kin to him than the cities -of men.</p> - -<p>After a while there was a jangling of brazen bangles behind him and -Fianna came up. He smiled at her, and she said rather sullenly,</p> - -<p>"The Lady Berild sent me, to remind you of her wish."</p> - -<p>Stark glanced to where the scarlet-curtained litter rocked along, and -his eyes glinted.</p> - -<p>"She's not one to let go of a thing, is she?"</p> - -<p>"No." Fianna saw that no one was within earshot, and then said quietly, -"Was it as I said, at Kala's?"</p> - -<p>Stark nodded. "I think, little one, that I owe you my life. Luhar would -have killed me as soon as I tackled Freka."</p> - -<p>He reached over and touched her hand where it lay on the bridle. She -smiled, a young girl's smile that seemed very sweet in the moonlight, -honest and comradely.</p> - -<p>It was odd to be talking of death with a pretty girl in the moonlight.</p> - -<p>Stark said, "Why does Delgaun want to kill me?"</p> - -<p>"He gave no reason, when he spoke to the man from Venus. But perhaps -I can guess. He knows that you're as strong as he is, and so he fears -you. Also, the Lady Berild looked at you in a certain way."</p> - -<p>"I thought Berild was Kynon's woman."</p> - -<p>"Perhaps she is—for the time," answered Fianna enigmatically. Then -she shook her head, glancing around with what was almost fear. "I have -risked much already. Please—don't let it be known that I've spoken to -you, beyond what I was sent to say."</p> - -<p>Her eyes pleaded with him, and Stark realized with a shock that Fianna, -too, stood on the edge of a quicksand.</p> - -<p>"Don't be afraid," he said, and meant it. "We'd better go."</p> - -<p>She swung her beast around, and as she did so she whispered, "Be -careful, Eric John Stark!"</p> - -<p>Stark nodded. He rode behind her, thinking that he liked the sound of -his name on her lips.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>The Lady Berild lay among her furs and cushions, and even then there -was no indolence about her. She was relaxed as a cat is, perfectly at -ease and yet vibrant with life. In the shadows of the litter her skin -showed silver-white and her loosened hair was a sweet darkness.</p> - -<p>"Are you stubborn, wild man?" she asked. "Or do you find me -distasteful?"</p> - -<p>He had not realized before how rich and soft her voice was. He looked -down at the magnificent supple length of her, and said,</p> - -<p>"I find you most damnably attractive—and that's why I'm stubborn."</p> - -<p>"Afraid?"</p> - -<p>"I'm taking Kynon's pay. Should I take his woman also?"</p> - -<p>She laughed, half scornfully. "Kynon's ambitions leave no room for me. -We have an agreement, because a king must have a queen—and he finds my -counsel useful. You see, I am ambitious, too! Apart from that, there is -nothing."</p> - -<p>Stark looked at her, trying to read her smoke-grey eyes in the gloom. -"And Delgaun?"</p> - -<p>"He wants me, but...." She hesitated, and then went on, in a tone -quite different from before, her voice low and throbbing with a secret -pleasure as vast and elemental as the star-shot sky.</p> - -<p>"I belong to no one," she said. "I am my own."</p> - -<p>Stark knew that for the moment she had forgotten him.</p> - -<p>He rode for a time in silence, and then he said slowly, repeating -Delgaun's words,</p> - -<p>"Perhaps you have forgotten something, Berild. There is nothing for you -in me, the creature of an hour."</p> - -<p>He saw her start, and for a moment her eyes blazed and her breath was -sharply drawn. Then she laughed, and said,</p> - -<p>"The wild man is also a parrot. And an hour can be a long time—as long -as eternity, if one wills it so."</p> - -<p>"Yes," said Stark, "I have often thought so, waiting for death to come -at me out of a crevice in the rocks. The great lizard stings, and his -bite is fatal."</p> - -<p>He leaned over in the saddle, his shoulders looming above hers, naked -in the biting wind.</p> - -<p>"My hours with women are short ones," he said. "They come after the -battle, when there is time for such things. Perhaps then I'll come and -see you."</p> - -<p>He spurred away and left her without a backward look, and the skin of -his back tingled with the expectancy of a flying knife. But the only -thing that followed him was a disturbing echo of laughter down the wind.</p> - -<p>Dawn came. Kynon beckoned Stark to his side, and pointed out at the -cruel waste of sand, with here and there a reef of basalt black against -the burning white.</p> - -<p>"This is the country you will lead your men over. Learn it." He was -speaking to Luhar as well. "Learn every water hole, every vantage -point, every trail that leads toward the Border. There are no -better fighters than the Dryland men when they're well led, and you -must prove to them that you can lead. You'll work with their own -chieftains—Freka, and the others you'll meet when we reach Sinharat."</p> - -<p>Luhar said, "Sinharat?"</p> - -<p>"My headquarters. It's about seven days' march—an island city, old as -the moons. The Rama cult was strong there, legend has it, and it's a -sort of holy place to the tribesmen. That's why I picked it."</p> - -<p>He took a deep breath and smiled, looking out over the dead sea bottom -toward the Border, and his eyes held the same pitiless light as the sun -that baked the desert.</p> - -<p>"Very soon, now," he said, more to himself than the others. "Only a -handful of days before we drown the Border states in their own blood. -And after that...."</p> - -<p>He laughed, very softly, and said no more. Stark could believe that -what Berild said of him was true. There was a flame of ambition in -Kynon that would let nothing stand in its way.</p> - -<p>He measured the size and the strength of the tall barbarian, the eagle -look of his face and the iron that lay beneath his joviality. Then -Stark, too, stared off toward the Border and wondered if he would ever -see Tarak or hear Simon Ashton's voice again.</p> - -<p>For three days they marched without incident. At noon they made a dry -camp and slept away the blazing hours, and then went on again under -a darkening sky, a long line of tall men and rangy beasts, with the -scarlet litter blooming like a strange flower in the midst of it. -Jingling bridles and dust, and padded hoofs trampling the bones of the -sea, toward the island city of Sinharat.</p> - -<p>Stark did not speak again to Berild, nor did she send for him. Fianna -would pass him in the camp, and smile sidelong, and go on. For her -sake, he did not stop her.</p> - -<p>Neither Luhar nor Freka came near him. They avoided him pointedly, -except when Kynon called them all together to discuss some point of -strategy. But the two seemed to have become friends, and drank together -from the same bottle of wine.</p> - -<p>Stark slept always beside his mount, his back guarded and his gun -loose. The hard lessons learned in his childhood had stayed with him, -and if there was a footfall near him in the dust he woke often before -the beast did.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Toward morning of the fourth night the wind, that never seemed to -falter from its steady blowing, began to drop. At dawn it was dead -still, and the rising sun had a tinge of blood. The dust rose under the -feet of the beasts and fell again where it had risen.</p> - -<p>Stark began to sniff the air. More and more often he looked toward the -north, where there was a long slope as flat as his palm that stretched -away farther than he could see.</p> - -<p>A restless unease grew within him. Presently he spurred ahead to join -Kynon.</p> - -<p>"There is a storm coming," he said, and turned his head northward again.</p> - -<p>Kynon looked at him curiously.</p> - -<p>"You even have the right direction," he said. "One might think you were -a native." He, too, gazed with brooding anger at the long sweep of -emptiness.</p> - -<p>"I wish we were closer to the city. But one place is as bad as another -when the khamsin blows, and the only thing to do is keep moving. You're -a dead dog if you stop—dead and buried."</p> - -<p>He swore, with a curious admixture of blunt Anglo-Saxon in his Martian -profanity, as though the storm were a personal enemy.</p> - -<p>"Pass the word along to force it—dump whatever they have to to lighten -the loads. And get Berild out of that damned litter. Stick by her, will -you, Stark? I've got to stay here, at the head of the line. And don't -get separated. Above all, <i>don't get separated</i>!"</p> - -<p>Stark nodded and dropped back. He got Berild mounted, and they left the -litter there, a bright patch of crimson on the sand, its curtains limp -in the utter stillness.</p> - -<p>Nobody talked much. The beasts were urged on to the top of their speed. -They were nervous and fidgety, inclined to break out of line and run -for it. The sun rose higher.</p> - -<p>One hour.</p> - -<p>The windless air shimmered. The silence lay upon the caravan with a -crushing hand. Stark went up and down the line, lending a hand to the -sweating drovers with the pack animals that now carried only water -skins and a bare supply of food. Fianna rode close beside Berild.</p> - -<p>Two hours.</p> - -<p>For the first time that day there was a sound in the desert.</p> - -<p>It came from far off, a moaning wail like the cry of a giantess in -travail. It rushed closer, rising as it did so to a dry and bitter -shriek that filled the whole sky, shook it, and tore it open, letting -in all the winds of hell.</p> - -<p>It struck swiftly. One moment the air was clear and motionless. The -next, it was blind with dust and screaming as it fled, tearing with -demoniac fury at everything in its path.</p> - -<p>Stark spurred toward the women, who were only a few feet away but -already hidden by the veil of mingled dust and sand.</p> - -<p>Someone blundered into him in the murk. Long hair whipped across his -face and he reached out, crying "Fianna! Fianna!" A woman's hand caught -his, and a voice answered, but he could not hear the words.</p> - -<p>Then, suddenly, his beast was crowded by other scaly bodies. The -woman's grip had broken. Hard masculine hands clawed at him. He could -make out, dimly, the features of two men, close to his.</p> - -<p>Luhar, and Freka.</p> - -<p>His beast gave a great lurch, and sprang forward. Stark was dragged -from the saddle, to fall backward into the raging sand.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p class="ph1">VII</p> - -<p>He lay half-stunned for a moment, his breath knocked out of him. There -was a terrible reptilian screaming sounding thin through the roar of -the wind. Vague shapes bolted past him, and twice he was nearly crushed -by their trampling hoofs.</p> - -<p>Luhar and Freka must have waited their chance. It was so beautifully -easy. Leave Stark alone and afoot, and the storm and the desert between -them would do the work, with no blame attaching to any man.</p> - -<p>Stark got to his feet, and a human body struck him at the knees so that -he went down again. He grappled with it, snarling, before he realized -that the flesh between his hands was soft and draped in silken cloth. -Then he saw that he was holding Berild.</p> - -<p>"It was I," she gasped, "and not Fianna."</p> - -<p>Her words reached him very faintly, though he knew she was yelling at -the top of her lungs. She must have been knocked from her own mount -when Luhar thrust between them.</p> - -<p>Gripping her tightly, so that she should not be blown away, Stark -struggled up again. With all his strength, it was almost impossible to -stand.</p> - -<p>Blinded, deafened, half strangled, he fought his way forward a few -paces, and suddenly one of the pack beasts loomed shadow-like beside -him, going by with a rush and a squeal.</p> - -<p>By the grace of Providence and his own swift reflexes, he caught its -pack lashings, clinging with the tenacity of a man determined not to -die. It floundered about, dragging them, until Berild managed to grasp -its trailing halter rope. Between them, they fought the creature down.</p> - -<p>Stark clung to its head while the woman clambered to its back, twisting -her arm through the straps of the pad. A silken scarf whipped toward -him. He took it and tied it over the head of the beast so it could -breathe, and after that it was quieter.</p> - -<p>There was no direction, no sight of anything, in that howling inferno. -The caravan seemed to have been scattered like a drift of autumn -leaves. Already, in the few brief moments he had stood still, Stark's -legs were buried to the knees in a substratum of sand that rolled -like water. He pulled himself free and started on, going nowhere, -remembering Kynon's words.</p> - -<p>Berild ripped her thin robe apart and gave him another strip of silk -for himself. He bound it over his nose and eyes, and some of the -choking and the blindness abated.</p> - -<p>Stumbling, staggering, beaten by the wind as a child is beaten by a -strong man, Stark went on, hoping desperately to find the main body of -the caravan, and knowing somehow that the hope was futile.</p> - -<p>The hours that followed were nightmare. He shut his mind to them, in a -way that a civilized man would have found impossible. In his childhood -there had been days, and nights, and the problems had been simple -ones—how to survive one span of light that one might then struggle to -survive the span of darkness that came after. One thing, one danger, at -a time.</p> - -<p>Now there was a single necessity. Keep moving. Forget tomorrow, or what -happened to the caravan, or where the little Fianna with her bright -eyes may be. Forget thirst, and the pain of breathing, and the fiery -lash of sand on naked skin. Only don't stand still.</p> - -<p>It was growing dark when the beast fell against a half-buried boulder -and snapped its foreleg. Stark gave it a quick and merciful death. They -took the straps from the pad and linked themselves together. Each took -as much food as he could carry, and Stark shouldered the single skin of -water that fortune had vouchsafed them.</p> - -<p>They staggered on, and Berild did not whimper.</p> - -<p>Night came, and still the khamsin blew. Stark wondered at the woman's -strength, for he had to help her only when she fell. He had lost all -feeling himself. His body was merely a thing that continued to move -only because it had been ordered not to stop.</p> - -<p>The haze in his own mind had grown as thick as the black obscurity of -the night. Berild had ridden all day, but he had walked, and there was -an end even to his strength. He was approaching it now, and was too -weary even to be afraid.</p> - -<p>He became aware at some indeterminate time that Berild had fallen and -was dragging her weight against the straps. He turned blindly to help -her up. She was saying something, crying his name, striking at him so -that he should hear her words and understand.</p> - -<p>At last he did. He pulled the wrappings from his face and breathed -clean air. The wind had fallen. The sky was growing clear.</p> - -<p>He dropped in his tracks and slept, with the exhausted woman half dead -beside him.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Thirst brought them both awake in the early dawn. They drank from the -skin, and then sat for a time looking at the desert, and at each other, -thinking of what lay ahead.</p> - -<p>"Do you know where we are?" Stark asked.</p> - -<p>"Not exactly." Berild's face was shadowed with weariness. It had -changed, and somehow, to Stark, it had grown more beautiful, because -there was no weakness in it.</p> - -<p>She thought a minute, looking at the sun. "The wind blew from the -north," she said. "Therefore we have come south from the track. -Sinharat lies that way, across the waste they call the Belly of -Stones." She pointed to the north and east.</p> - -<p>"How far?"</p> - -<p>"Seven, eight days, afoot."</p> - -<p>Stark measured their supply of water and shook his head. "It'll be dry -walking."</p> - -<p>He rose and took up the skin, and Berild came beside him without a -word. Her red hair hung loose over her shoulders. The rags of her -silken robe had been torn away by the wind, leaving her only the loose -skirt of the desert women, and her belt and collar of jewels.</p> - -<p>She walked erect with a steady, swinging stride, and it was almost -impossible for Stark to remember her as she had been, riding like a -lazy queen in her scarlet litter.</p> - -<p>There was no way to shelter themselves from the midday sun. The sun of -Mars at its worst, however, was only a pale candle beside the sun of -Mercury, and it did not bother Stark. He made Berild lie in the shadow -of his own body, and he watched her face, relaxed and unfamiliar in -sleep.</p> - -<p>For the first time, then, he was conscious of a strangeness in her. -He had seen so little of her before, in Valkis, and almost nothing on -the trail. Now, there was little of her mind or heart that she could -conceal from him.</p> - -<p>Or was there? There were moments, while she slept, when the shadows of -strange dreams crossed her face. Sometimes, in the unguarded moment of -waking, he would see in her eyes a look he could not read, and his -primitive senses quivered with a vague ripple of warning.</p> - -<p>Yet all through those blazing days and frosty nights, tortured with -thirst and weary to exhaustion, Berild was magnificent. Her white skin -was darkened by the sun and her hair became a wild red mane, but she -smiled and set her feet resolutely by his, and Stark thought she was -the most beautiful creature he had ever seen.</p> - -<p>On the fourth day they climbed a scarp of limestone worn in ages past -by the sea, and looked out over the place called the Belly of Stones.</p> - -<p>The sea bottom curved downward below them into a sort of gigantic -basin, the farther rim of which was lost in shimmering waves of heat. -Stark thought that never, even on Mercury, had he seen a place more -cruel and utterly forsaken of gods or men.</p> - -<p>It seemed as though some primal glacier must have met its death here -in the dim dawn of Mars, hollowing out its own grave. The body of the -glacier had melted away, but its bones were left.</p> - -<p>Bones of basalt, of granite and marble and porphyry, of every -conceivable color and shape and size, picked up by the ice as it -marched southward from the pole and dropped here as a cairn to mark its -passing.</p> - -<p>The Belly of Stones. Stark thought that its other name was Death....</p> - -<p>For the first time, Berild faltered. She sat down and bent her head -over her hands.</p> - -<p>"I am tired," she said. "Also, I am afraid."</p> - -<p>Stark asked, "Has it ever been crossed?"</p> - -<p>"Once. But they were a war party, mounted and well supplied."</p> - -<p>Stark looked out across the stones. "We will cross it," he said.</p> - -<p>Berild raised her head. "Somehow I believe you." She rose slowly and -put her hands on his breast, over the strong beating of his heart.</p> - -<p>"Give me your strength, wild man," she whispered. "I shall need it."</p> - -<p>He drew her to him and kissed her, and it was a strange and painful -kiss, for their lips were cracked and bleeding from their terrible -thirst. Then they went down together into the place called the Belly of -Stones.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p class="ph1">VIII</p> - -<p>The desert had been a pleasant and kindly place. Stark looked back upon -it with longing. And yet this inferno of blazing rock was so like the -valleys of his boyhood that it did not occur to him to lie down and die.</p> - -<p>They rested for a time in the sheltered crevice under a great leaning -slab of blood-red stone, moistening their swollen tongues with a few -drops of stinking water from the skin. At nightfall they drank the last -of it, but Berild would not let him throw the skin away.</p> - -<p>Darkness, and a lunar silence. The chill air sucked the day's heat -out of the rocks and the iron frost came down, so that Stark and the -red-haired woman must keep moving or freeze.</p> - -<p>Stark's mind grew clouded. He spoke from time to time, in a croaking -whisper, dropping back into the harsh mother-tongue of the Twilight -Belt. It seemed to him that he was hunting, as he had so many times -before, in the waterless places—for the blood of the great lizard -would save him from thirst.</p> - -<p>But nothing lived in the Belly of Stones. Nothing, but the two who -crept and staggered across it under the low moons.</p> - -<p>Berild fell, and could not rise again. Stark crouched beside her. Her -face stared up at him, white in the moonlight, her eyes burning and -strange.</p> - -<p>"I will not die!" she whispered, not to him, but to the gods. "<i>I will -not die!</i>"</p> - -<p>And she clawed the sand and the bitter rocks, dragging herself onward. -It was uncanny, the madness that she had for life.</p> - -<p>Stark raised her up and carried her. His breath came in deep sobbing -gasps. After a while he, too, fell. He went on like a beast on all -fours, dragging the woman.</p> - -<p>He knew dimly that he was climbing. There was a glimmering of dawn in -the sky. His hands slipped on a lip of sand and he went rolling down -a smooth slope. At length he stopped and lay on his back like a dead -thing.</p> - -<p>The sun was high when consciousness returned to him. He saw Berild -lying near him and crawled to her, shaking her until her eyes opened. -Her hands moved feebly and her lips formed the same four words. <i>I will -not die.</i></p> - -<p>Stark strained his eyes to the horizon, praying for a glimpse of -Sinharat, but there was nothing, only emptiness and sand. With great -difficulty he got the woman to her feet, supporting her.</p> - -<p>He tried to tell her that they must go on, but he could no longer form -the words. He could only gesture and urge her forward, in the direction -of the city.</p> - -<p>But she refused to go. "Too far ... die ... without water...."</p> - -<p>He knew that she was right, but still he was not ready to give up.</p> - -<p>She began to move away from him, toward the south, and he thought that -she had gone mad and was wandering. Then he saw that she was peering -with awful intensity at the line of the scarp that formed this wall -of the Belly of Stones. It rose into a great ridge, serrated like the -backbone of a whale, and some three miles away a long dorsal fin of -reddish rock curved out into the desert.</p> - -<p>Berild made a little sobbing noise in her throat. She began to plod -toward the distant promontory.</p> - -<p>Stark caught up with her. He tried to stop her, but she would not be -stopped, turning a feral glare upon him.</p> - -<p>She croaked, "Water!" and pointed.</p> - -<p>He was sure now that she was mad. He told her so, forcing the painful -words out of his throat, reminding her of Sinharat and that she was -going away from any possible help.</p> - -<p>She said again, quite sanely, "Too far. Two—three days without water." -She pointed. "Monastery—old well—a chance...."</p> - -<p>Stark decided that he had little to lose by trusting her. He nodded and -went with her toward the curve of rock.</p> - -<p>The three miles might have been three hundred. At last they came up -under the ragged cliffs—and there was nothing there but sand.</p> - -<p>Stark looked at the woman. A great rage and a deep sense of futility -came over him. They were indeed lost.</p> - -<p>But Berild had gone a few steps farther. With a hoarse cry, she bent -over what had seemed merely a slab of stone fallen from the cliff, and -Stark saw that it was a carven pillar, half buried. Now he was able to -make out the mounded shape of a ruin, of which only the foundations and -a few broken columns were left.</p> - -<p>For a long while Berild stood by the pillar, her eyes closed. Stark got -the uncanny feeling that she was visualizing the place as it had been, -though the wall must have been dust a thousand years ago. Presently she -moved. He followed her, and it was strange to see her, on the naked -sand, treading the arbitrary patterns of vanished corridors.</p> - -<p>She came to a halt, in a broad flat space that might once have been a -central courtyard. There she fell on her knees and began to dig.</p> - -<p>Stark got down beside her. They scrabbled like a pair of dogs in the -yielding sand. Stark's nails slipped across something hard, and there -was a yellow glint through the dusty ochre. Within a few minutes they -had bared a golden cover six feet across, very massive and wonderfully -carved with the symbols of some lost god of the sea.</p> - -<p>Stark struggled to lift the thing away. He could not move it. Then -Berild pressed a hidden spring and the cover slid back of itself. -Beneath it, sweet and cold, protected through all these ages, water -stirred gently against mossy stones.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>An hour later, Stark and Berild lay sleeping, soaked to the skin, their -very hair dripping with the blessed dampness.</p> - -<p>That night, when the low moons roved over the desert, they sat by the -well, drowsy with an animal sense of rest and repletion. And Stark -looked at the woman and said,</p> - -<p>"I know you now."</p> - -<p>"What do you know, wild man?"</p> - -<p>Stark said quietly, "You are a Rama."</p> - -<p>She did not answer at once. Then she said, "I was bred in these -deserts. Is it so strange that I should know of this well?"</p> - -<p>"Strange that you didn't mention it before. You were afraid, weren't -you, that if you led me here your secret would come out? But it was -that, or die."</p> - -<p>He leaned forward, studying her.</p> - -<p>"If you had led me straight to the well, I might not have wondered. But -you had to stop and remember, how the halls were built and where the -doorways were that led to the inner court. You lived in this place when -it was whole. And no one, not even Kynon himself, knows of it but you."</p> - -<p>"You dream, wild man. The moon is in your eyes."</p> - -<p>Stark shook his head slowly. "I know."</p> - -<p>She laughed, and stretched her arms wide on the sand.</p> - -<p>"But I am young," she said. "And men have told me I am beautiful. It -is good to be young, for youth has nothing to do with ashes and empty -skulls."</p> - -<p>She touched his arm, and little darts of fire went through his flesh, -warm from his fingertips.</p> - -<p>"Forget your dreams, wild man. They're madness, gone with the morning."</p> - -<p>He looked down at her in the clear pale light, and she was young, and -beautifully made, and her lips were smiling.</p> - -<p>He bent his head. Her arms went round him. Her hair blew soft against -his cheek. Then, suddenly, she set her teeth cruelly into his lip. He -cried out and thrust her away, and she sat back on her heels, mocking -him.</p> - -<p>"That," she said, "is because you called Fianna's name instead of mine, -when the storm broke."</p> - -<p>Stark cursed her. There was a taste of blood in his mouth. He reached -out and caught her, and again she laughed, a peculiarly sweet, wicked -sound.</p> - -<p>The wind blew over them, sighing, and the desert was very still.</p> - -<p>For two days they remained among the ruins. At evening of the second -day Stark filled the water skin, and Berild replaced the golden cover -on the well. They began the last long march toward Sinharat.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p class="ph1">IX</p> - -<p>Stark saw it rising against the morning sky—a city of gold and marble, -high on an island of rose-red coral laid bare by the vanished sea. -Sinharat, the Ever-Living.</p> - -<p>Yet it had died. As he came closer to it, plodding slowly through the -sand, he saw that the place was no more than a beautiful corpse, the -lovely towers broken, the roofless palaces open to the sky. Whatever -life Kynon and his armies might have foisted upon Sinharat was no more -than the fleeting passage of ants across the perfect bones of the dead.</p> - -<p>"What was it like before?" he asked, "with the blue water around it, -and the banners flying?"</p> - -<p>Berild turned a dark, calculating look upon him.</p> - -<p>"I told you before to forget that madness. If you talk it, no one will -believe you."</p> - -<p>"No one?"</p> - -<p>"You had best not anger me, wild man," she said quietly. "I may be your -only hope of life, before this is over."</p> - -<p>They did not speak again, going with slow weary steps toward the city.</p> - -<p>In the desert below the coral cliffs the armies of Kynon were encamped. -The tall warriors of Kesh and Shun waiting, with their women and their -beasts and their shining spears, for the pipers to cry them over -the Border. The skin tents and the long picket lines were too many -to count. In the distance, a convertible Kallman spacer that Stark -recognized as Knighton's made an ugly, jarring incongruity.</p> - -<p>Lookouts sighted the two toiling figures in the distance. Men and women -and children began to stream out across the sand, and presently a -great cheering arose. Where he had looked on emptiness for days, Stark -was smothered now by the press of thousands. Berild was picked up and -carried on the shoulders of two chiefs, and men would have carried -Stark also, but he fought them off.</p> - -<p>Broad flights of steps were cut in the coral. The throng flowed upward -along them. Ahead of them all went Eric John Stark, and he was smiling. -From time to time he asked a question, and men drew back from that -question, and his smile.</p> - -<p>Up the steps and into the streets of Sinharat he went, with a slow, -restless stride, asking,</p> - -<p>"Where is Luhar of Venus?"</p> - -<p>Every man there read death in his face, but they did not try to stop -him.</p> - -<p>People came out of the graceful ruins, drawn by the clamour, and the -tide rolled down the broad ways, the rose-red streets of coral, until -it spread out in the square before a great palace of gold and ivory and -white marble blinding in the sun.</p> - -<p>Luhar of Venus came down the terraced steps, fresh from sleep, his pale -hair tumbled, his eyes still drowsy.</p> - -<p>Others came through the door behind him. Stark did not see them. They -did not matter. Berild didn't matter, calling his name from where she -sat on the shoulders of the chiefs. Nothing, no one mattered, but -himself and Luhar.</p> - -<p>He crossed the square, not hurrying, a dark ravaged giant in rags. He -saw Luhar pause on the bottom step. He saw the sleep and the vagueness -go out of the Venusian's eyes as they rested first on the red-haired -woman, then on himself. He saw the fear come into them, and the undying -hate.</p> - -<p>Someone got between him and Luhar. Stark lifted the man and flung him -aside without breaking his stride, and went on. Luhar half turned. He -would have run away, back into the palace, but there were too many now -between him and the door. He crouched and drew his gun.</p> - -<p>Stark sprang.</p> - -<p>He came like a great black panther leaping, and he struck low. Luhar's -shot went over his back. After that there was no more shooting. There -was a moment, terribly short and silent, in which the two men lay -entangled, straining against each other in a sort of stasis. Then Luhar -screamed.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Stark knew dimly that there were hands, many of them, trying to drag -him away. He clung growling to the Venusian until he was torn loose by -main force. He struggled against his captors, and through a red haze he -saw Kynon's face, close to his and very angry. Luhar was not yet dead.</p> - -<p>"I warned you, Stark!" said Kynon furiously. "I warned you."</p> - -<p>Men were bending over Luhar. Knighton, Walsh, Themis, Arrod. Stark saw -that Delgaun was among them. He did not question at the time how word -had gone back to Valkis and sent Delgaun racing across the dead sea -bottom with his hired bravoes to search for the red-haired woman. It -was right that Delgaun should be there.</p> - -<p>In short ragged sentences, Stark told how Luhar and Freka had tried to -kill him, and how Berild had been lost with him.</p> - -<p>Kynon turned to the Venusian. Death was already glazing the cloud-grey -eyes, but it had not quenched the hatred and the venom.</p> - -<p>"He lies," whispered Luhar. "I saw him—he tried to run away and take -the woman with him."</p> - -<p>Luhar of Venus, taking vengeance with his last breath.</p> - -<p>Freka pushed forward, transparently eager to pick up his cue. "It is -so," he said. "I was with Luhar. I saw it also."</p> - -<p>Delgaun laughed. Cruel, silent laughter. He stood up, and looked at -Berild.</p> - -<p>Berild's eyes were blazing. She ignored Delgaun and spoke to Kynon.</p> - -<p>"You fool. Can't you see that they hate him? What Stark says is true. -And I would have died in the desert because of them, if Stark hadn't -been a better man than all of you."</p> - -<p>"Strange words," said Delgaun, "coming from a man's own mate. Perhaps -Luhar did lie, after all. Perhaps it was not Stark who tried to run -away, but you."</p> - -<p>She cursed him, with an ancient curse, and Kynon looked at her -sullenly. He said to the men who held Stark, "Chain him below, in the -dungeons." Then he took Berild's arm and went with her into the palace.</p> - -<p>Stark fought until someone behind him knocked him on the head with the -butt of a spear. The last thing he saw was the face of Fianna, standing -out from the crowd, wide-eyed with pity and love.</p> - -<p>He came to in a place of cold, dry stone. There was an iron collar -around his neck, and a five-foot chain ran from it to a ring in the -wall. The cell was small. A gate of iron bars closed the single -entrance. Beyond was an open well, with other cell doors around it, and -above were thick stone gratings open to the sky. He guessed that the -place was built beneath some inner court of the palace.</p> - -<p>There were no other prisoners. But there was a guard, a -thick-shouldered barbarian who sat on the execution block in the center -of the well, with a sword and a jug of wine. A guard who watched the -captive Stark smiled.</p> - -<p>Freka.</p> - -<p>When he saw that Stark was awake, Freka lifted up the jug and laughed. -"Here's to Death," he said. "For no one else comes here!"</p> - -<p>He drank, and after that he did not speak, only sat and smiled.</p> - -<p>Stark said nothing either. He waited, with the same unhuman patience he -had shown when he waited for his captors under the tor.</p> - -<p>The dim daylight faded from the gratings. Darkness came, and the pale -glimmer of the moons. Freka became a silvered statue of a man, sitting -on the block. Stark's eyes glowed.</p> - -<p>The empty jug dropped and broke. Freka rose. He took the naked sword in -his hand and crossed the open space to the cell. He lifted the outer -bar away. It fell with a great echoing clang, and Freka entered.</p> - -<p>"Stand up, Outlander," he said. "Stand up and face the steel. After -that you'll sleep in a coral pit, and not even the worms will find you."</p> - -<p>"Beast of Shanga!" Stark said contemptuously, and set his back against -the wall, to give himself all the slack of the chain.</p> - -<p>He saw the bright steel glimmer in the air, up and down again, but when -the blow fell he had leaped aside, and the point struck ringing against -the stone. Stark darted in to grapple.</p> - -<p>His fingers slipped on hard muscle, and Freka wrenched away. He was -a fighting man, and no weakling. The iron collar dug painfully into -the Earthman's throat and the heavy chain threw him backward. Freka -laughed, deep in his chest. The sword glinted hungrily.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Then, as though she had taken shape suddenly from the shadows, Fianna -was in the doorway. The little gun in her hand made a hissing spurt of -flame. Freka screamed once, and fell. He did not move again.</p> - -<p>"The swine," Fianna said, without emotion. "Delgaun ordered him to -wait, until it was sure that Kynon would not come down to talk to you. -Then the story was to be that you had escaped somehow, with Berild's -aid."</p> - -<p>She stepped over the body and unlocked the iron collar with a key she -took from her girdle.</p> - -<p>Stark took her slender shoulders gently between his hands. "Are you a -witch-girl, that you know all things and always come when I need you?"</p> - -<p>She gave him a deep, strange look. In the dusk, her proud young face -was unfamiliar, touched with something fey and sad. He wished that he -could see her eyes more clearly.</p> - -<p>"I know all things because I must," she told him wearily. "And I think -that you are my only hope—perhaps the only hope of Mars."</p> - -<p>He drew her to him, and kissed her, and stroked her dark head. "You're -too young to concern yourself with the destinies of worlds."</p> - -<p>He felt her tremble. "The youth of the body is only illusion, when the -mind is old."</p> - -<p>"And is yours old, little one?"</p> - -<p>"Old," she whispered. "As old as Berild's."</p> - -<p>He felt her tears warm against his skin, and she was like a child in -his arms.</p> - -<p>"Then you know about her," said Stark.</p> - -<p>"Yes."</p> - -<p>He paused. "And Delgaun?"</p> - -<p>"Delgaun also."</p> - -<p>"I thought so," Stark said. He nodded, scowling at the barred moonlight -in the well. "There are things I must know, myself—but we'd best get -out of here. Did Berild send you?"</p> - -<p>"Yes—as soon as she could get the key from Kynon. She is waiting for -you." She stirred Freka's body with her foot. "Bring that. We'll hide -it in the pit he meant for you."</p> - -<p>Stark heaved the body over his shoulder and followed the girl through -a twisting maze of corridors, some pitch dark, some feebly lighted by -the moons. Fianna moved as surely as though she were in the main square -at high noon. There was the silence of death in these cold tunnels, and -the dry faint smell of eternity.</p> - -<p>At length Fianna whispered. "Here. Be careful."</p> - -<p>She put out a hand to guide him, but Stark's eyes were like a cat's in -the dark. He made out a space where the rock with which the ancient -builders had faced these subterranean ways gave place to the original -coral.</p> - -<p>Ragged black mouths opened in the coral, entrances to some unguessed -catacombs beneath. Stark consigned Freka to the nearest pit, and then -reluctantly threw his sword in after him.</p> - -<p>"You won't need it," Fianna told him, "and besides, it would be -recognized. This will be a bitter night enough, without rousing the men -of Shun over Freka's death."</p> - -<p>Stark listened to the distant sliding echoes from the pit, and -shivered. He had so nearly finished there himself. He was glad to -follow Fianna away from that place of darkness and silent death.</p> - -<p>He stopped her in a place where a bar of moonlight came splashing -through a great crack in the tunnel roof.</p> - -<p>"Now," he said, "we will talk."</p> - -<p>She nodded. "Yes. The time has come for that."</p> - -<p>"There are lies everywhere," said Stark. "I am tangled up in lies. You -know the truth that is behind this war of Kynon's. Tell me."</p> - -<p>"Kynon's truth is simple," she answered, speaking slowly, choosing her -words. "He wants land and power, conquest. He will pour out the blood -of his people for that, and after that he plans to use the men of the -Low-Canals under Delgaun to keep the tribesmen in line. It may be -true, as he said, that they would be satisfied with grazing land and -water—but they would lose their freedom, and their pride, and I think -he has judged them wrongly. I think they would revolt."</p> - -<p>She looked up at Stark. "He planned to use your knowledge, and then -destroy you if you became troublesome."</p> - -<p>"I guessed that. What about the others?"</p> - -<p>"The outlanders? Use them, keep them as subordinates, or pay them off. -Kill them, if necessary."</p> - -<p>"Now," said Stark. "What of Delgaun and Berild?"</p> - -<p>Fianna said softly, "Their truth, too, is simple. They took Kynon's -idea of empire, and stretched it further. It was Delgaun's idea to -bring the strangers in. They would use Kynon and the tribes until -the victory was won. Then they would do away with Kynon and rule -themselves—with the outlanders and their ships and their powerful -weapons to oppress Low-Canaller and Drylander alike.</p> - -<p>"That way, they could rape a world. More outland vultures would come, -drawn by the smell of loot. The Martian men would fight as long as -there was the hope of plunder—after that, they would be slaves to -hold the empire. Their masters would grow fat on tribute from the -City-States and from the men of Earth who have built here, or who wish -to build. An evil plan—but profitable."</p> - -<p>Stark thought about Knighton and Walsh of Terra, Themis of Mercury, -Arrod of Callisto Colony. He thought of others like them, and what they -would do, with their talons hooked in the heart of Mars. He thought of -Delgaun's yellow eyes.</p> - -<p>He thought of Berild, and he was sick with loathing.</p> - -<p>Fianna came close to him, speaking in a different tone that had care -and anxiety only for him.</p> - -<p>"I have told you this, because I know what Berild plans. Tonight—oh, -tonight is a black and evil time, and death waits in Sinharat! It is -very close to me, I know. And you must follow your own heart, Eric John -Stark. I cannot tell you more."</p> - -<p>He kissed her again, because she was sweet and very brave. Then she led -him on through the dark labyrinth, to where Berild was waiting, with -her dangerous beauty and all the evil of the ages in her soul.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p class="ph1">X</p> - -<p>They came out of the darkness so suddenly that Stark blinked in the -unaccustomed light of torches set in great silver sconces on the walls.</p> - -<p>The floor had been artificially smoothed, but otherwise this crypt was -as the eroding action of the sea had shaped it out of the coral reef. -It was not large, and it was like a cavern in a fairy tale, walled and -roofed with the fantastic wreathing shapes of the rose-red coral. At -one end there was a golden coffer set with flaming jewels.</p> - -<p>Berild was there. Her wonderful hair was dressed and shining, and her -body was clothed all in white, her arms and shoulders warm bronze from -the kiss of the desert sun.</p> - -<p>Kynon was there, also. He stood motionless and silent, and he did not -so much as turn his head when Fianna and Stark came in. His eyes were -wide open and blank as a blind man's.</p> - -<p>"I have been waiting," said Berild, "and the time is short."</p> - -<p>She seemed angry and impatient, and Stark said, "Freka is dead. It was -necessary to hide his body."</p> - -<p>She nodded and turned to the girl. "Go now, Fianna."</p> - -<p>Fianna bent her head and went away. She did not look at Stark. It was -as though she had no interest in anything that happened.</p> - -<p>Stark looked at Kynon, who had not moved or spoken.</p> - -<p>"He is safe enough," said Berild, answering Stark's unspoken question. -"I drugged his wine so that his mind was opened to mine, and he is my -creature as long as I will it."</p> - -<p>Hypnosis, Stark thought. His nerves were beginning to do strange -things. He wished desperately that he were back in the cell facing -Freka's sword, which at least would deal with him openly and without -guile or subterfuge.</p> - -<p>Berild set her hands on Stark's shoulders, and smiled as she had done -that night by the ancient well.</p> - -<p>"I offer you three things tonight, wild man," she said. Her eyes -challenged him, and the scent of her hair was sweet and maddening.</p> - -<p>"Your life—and power—and myself."</p> - -<p>Stark let his hands slip lightly down from her shoulders to her waist. -"And how will you do this thing?" he asked.</p> - -<p>"Easily," she said, and laughed. She was very proud, and sure of her -strength, and glad to be alive. "Oh, very easily. You guessed the truth -about me—I am of the Twice-Born, the Ramas. I hold the secret of the -Sending-on of Minds, which this great ox Kynon pretended to have. I can -give you life now—and forever. Remember, wild man—forever!"</p> - -<p>He bent his dark face to hers, so that their lips touched, and -murmured, "Would I have you forever, Berild?"</p> - -<p>"Until you tire of me—or I of you." She kissed him, and then added -mockingly, "Delgaun has had me for a thousand years, and I am weary of -him. So very weary!"</p> - -<p>"A thousand years is a long time," said Stark, "and I am not Delgaun."</p> - -<p>"No. You're a beast, a savage, a most magnificent cold-eyed animal, and -that is why I love you." She touched the muscle of his breast, and then -his throat, and added, "It's a pity there will never be another body -like this one. We must keep it as long as we can."</p> - -<p>"What is your plan?" Stark asked her.</p> - -<p>"Simply this. I will place your mind in Kynon's body. You will <i>be</i> -Kynon, with all his power. You will be able then to keep Delgaun in -check—later, you can destroy him, but not until after the battle is -won, for we need the men of Valkis and Jekkara. You can keep your own -body safe from him, and at the worst, if by some chance he should -succeed in slaying the man he believes to be you, <i>you</i> will still be -alive."</p> - -<p>"And after the battle," said Stark softly. "What then, Berild?"</p> - -<p>"We will rule together." She held his palms against hers. "You have -strong hands, wild man. Would you not like to hold a world between -them—and me?"</p> - -<p>She looked up at him, her eyes suddenly shrewd and probing. "Or do you -still believe the nonsense you talked to Kynon, about the tribes?"</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Stark smiled. "It's easy to have principles when there's no gain -involved. No. I am as my name says—a man without a tribe. I have no -loyalties. And if I had, would I remember them now?"</p> - -<p>He held her, as she had said, between his hands, and they were very -strong.</p> - -<p>But even then, Berild could warn him.</p> - -<p>"Keep faith with me, then! My wisdom is greater than yours, and I have -powers you don't dream of. What I give, I can take away."</p> - -<p>For answer, Stark silenced her mouth with his own.</p> - -<p>When she drew away, she said rather breathlessly, "Let us hurry. The -tribes are gathered, and Kynon was to have given the signal for war at -dawn. There is much I must teach you between now and then."</p> - -<p>She paused with her hand on the lid of the golden coffer. "This is a -secret place," she said quietly. "Since before the ocean died, it has -been secret. Not even Kynon knew of it. I think only Delgaun and I, the -last of the Twice-Born, knew—and now you."</p> - -<p>"What about Fianna?"</p> - -<p>Berild shrugged. "She is only my servant. To her, this is only a little -cavern where I keep my private wealth."</p> - -<p>She pressed a series of patterned bosses in intricate sequence, and -there was the sharp click of an opening lock. A shiver ran up along -Stark's spine. The beast in him longed to run, to be away from this -whole business that smelled of evil. But the man in him knelt at -Berild's wish, and waited, and did not flinch when the blank-eyed Kynon -came like a moving corpse beside him.</p> - -<p>Berild raised the golden lid. And there was a great silence.</p> - -<p>On the slave block of Valkis, Kynon had brought forth two crowns of -shining crystal, and a rod of flame. As glass is to diamond, as the -pallid moon to the light of the sun, were those things to the reality.</p> - -<p>In her two hands Berild held the ancient crowns of the Ramas, the -givers of life. Twin circlets of glorious fire, dimming the shallow -glare of the torches, putting a nimbus of light around the white-clad -woman so that she was like a goddess walking in a cloud of stars. -Stark's whole being contracted to a point of icy pain at the beauty and -the wonder and the terror of them.</p> - -<p>She set one crown on Kynon's head, and even the drugged automaton -shivered and sighed at its touch.</p> - -<p>Stark's mind veered away from the incredible thing that was about to -happen. It spoke words to him, hurried desperate words of sanity, about -the electrical patterns of the mind, and the sensitivity of crystals, -and conductors, and electro-magnetic impulses. But that was only the -top of his brain. At base it was still the brain of N'Chaka that -believed in gods and demons and all the sorceries of darkness. Only -pride kept him from cowering abjectly at Berild's feet.</p> - -<p>She stood above him, a creature of dreams in the unearthly light. She -smiled and whispered, "Do not fear,"—and she placed the second crown -upon his head.</p> - -<p>A strange, shuddering fire swept through him. It was as though some -chip of the primal heart of all creation had been set by an unguessed -magic into the cells of the crystal. The force that shaped the universe -and scattered forth the stars, and set the great suns to spinning. -There was something awesome about it, something almost holy.</p> - -<p>And yet he was afraid. Most shockingly afraid.</p> - -<p>His brain was set free, in some strange fashion. The walls of his skull -vanished. His mind floated in a dim vastness. It was like a tiny sun, -glowing, spinning, swelling....</p> - -<p>Berild lifted a crystal rod from the coffer, a wand of sorcerous fire. -And now Stark's thoughts had lost all track of science. A cloud of -misty darkness flowed around him, thickened....</p> - -<p>A great leaping flare of light, a distant echo of a cry that he did not -recognize as his own, and then....</p> - -<p>Nothing.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p class="ph1">XI</p> - -<p>He was lying on his face, his cheek pressed against the cool coral. He -opened his eyes, his mind groping for the shreds of some remembered -terror. He saw, vaguely at first and then with terrible clarity as his -vision became clear, a man lying close beside him.</p> - -<p>A tall man, very strongly built, with skin burned almost to blackness -by exposure. A man who looked at him with eyes that were startlingly -light in his dark face....</p> - -<p>His own eyes. His own face.</p> - -<p>He cried out and struggled to his feet, trembling, staggering, and -his body felt strange to him. He looked down upon the strangeness of -another man's limbs, the alien shaping of flesh and sinew upon alien -bones.</p> - -<p>The face of the dark giant who lay upon the coral mocked him. It -watched, but did not see. The eyes were blank, empty, without soul or -intelligence.</p> - -<p>The mind of Eric John Stark fought, in its alien prison, for sanity.</p> - -<p>Berild's voice spoke to him. Her hand was on his shoulder—Kynon's -shoulder....</p> - -<p>"All is well, wild man. Do not fear. Kynon's mind is in your body, -still sleeping at my command. And you are Kynon now."</p> - -<p>It was not an easy thing to accept, but he knew that it was so, and he -knew that he had wished it to be so. It was easier to be calm after he -turned his back on <i>the other</i>.</p> - -<p>Berild took him in her arms and held him until he had stopped -shuddering, oddly like a mother with a frightened child. Then she -kissed him, smiling, and said,</p> - -<p>"The first time is hard. I can remember—and that was very long ago." -She shook him gently. "Now come. We'll take your body to a place -of safety. And then I must tell you all of Kynon's plans for those -outside."</p> - -<p>She spoke to the thing that lay upon the coral, saying, "Get up," and -it rose obediently and followed where Berild led, to a tiny barred -niche in a side passage. It made no protest when it was left, locked -safely in.</p> - -<p>"Only I can give it back to you," said Berild softly. "Remember that."</p> - -<p>Stark said, "I will remember."</p> - -<p>He went with Berild to Kynon's quarters in the palace. He sat among -Kynon's possessions, clothed in Kynon's flesh, and learned how Kynon's -mind had planned to loose a red tide upon the peaceful cities of the -Border.</p> - -<p>Only a small part of his mind was attentive to this. The rest of it was -concerned with the redness of Berild's hair and the warmth of her lips, -and with the heady knowledge that it was possible to be alive and young -forever.</p> - -<p>Never to lose the pride of strength, never to know the dimming -sight and failing mind of age. To go on, like a child in an endless -playground, with no fear of tomorrow.</p> - -<p>It was nearly dawn.</p> - -<p>Berild rose. She had told him much, but not the things Fianna had told -him, of the secret treachery she had planned with Delgaun. She helped -Stark to clothe Kynon's body in the harness of war, with the longsword -and the shield and the shining spear. Then she set her lips to his so -that his borrowed heart threatened to choke him with its pounding, and -her eyes were wondrously bright and beautiful.</p> - -<p>"It is time," she whispered.</p> - -<p>She walked beside him, as he had seen her beside Kynon in Valkis, -stepping like a queen.</p> - -<p>They came out of the palace, onto the steps where Luhar had died. There -were beasts waiting, trapped for war, and an escort of tall chiefs, -with pipers and drummers and link-boys to light the way.</p> - -<p>Stark mounted Kynon's beast. It sensed the wrongness in him, hissing -and rearing, but he held it down, and imperiously raised his hand.</p> - -<p>Throbbing drums and skirling pipes, tossing flames where the link-boys -ran with the torches, a clash of metal and a cheer, and Kynon of Shun -rode down through the streets of Sinharat to the coral cliffs, with the -red-haired woman at his side.</p> - -<p>They were waiting.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>The men of Kesh and the men of Shun were gathered below the cliffs, -waiting. Stark led the way, as Berild had told him to, onto a ledge of -coral above them. Delgaun was there, with the outlanders and a handful -of Valkisians. He looked tired and ill-tempered. Stark knew that he had -been busy for hours with last-minute preparations.</p> - -<p>The first pale rays of dawn broke across the desert. A vast ringing cry -went up from the gathered armies. After that there was silence, a taut -expectant hush.</p> - -<p>There was no fear in Stark now. He was past that. Fear was too small an -emotion for what was about to be.</p> - -<p>He saw Delgaun's golden eyes, hot with a cruel excitement. He saw -Berild's secret triumph in her smile. He looked down upon the warriors, -and let the magnificent voice of Kynon ring out across the soundless -air.</p> - -<p>"There will be no war," he said. "You have been betrayed."</p> - -<p>In the moment that was left to him, he confessed the lie of the Rama -crowns. And then Berild, who was behind him now, had moved like a -red-haired fury to drive her dagger into his heart.</p> - -<p>In his own body, Stark might have escaped the blow. But the reflexes of -Kynon were not as his. They were swift enough to postpone death—the -blade bit deep, but not where Berild had wished it. He turned and -caught her by the wrists, and said to Delgaun,</p> - -<p>"She has betrayed you, too. Freka lies in a coral pit—and I am not -Kynon."</p> - -<p>Berild tore away from him. She spurred her beast toward the Valkisian. -She would have broken past him, through the escort, and up the cliffs -to safety in the tunnels under Sinharat. But Delgaun was too quick.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<div class="figcenter"> - <img src="images/illus.jpg" alt=""/> - <div class="caption"> - <p><i>She would have broken past him, but Delgaun was too quick.</i></p> - </div> -</div> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p>One hand caught in the masses of her hair. She was dragged screaming -from the saddle, and even then her screams were not of fear, but of -fury. She clawed at Delgaun, and he fell with her to the ground.</p> - -<p>The tall chieftains of the escort came forward, but they were dazed, -and confused by the anger that was rising in them. Delgaun's wiry body -arched. He flung the woman over the ledge, and what happened to her -after that Stark did not see, nor wish to see.</p> - -<p>He was shouting again to the barbarians, the tale of Delgaun's -treachery.</p> - -<p>Behind him on the ledge there was turmoil where Delgaun ran on foot -between the beasts, and the outlanders made their try for safety. Below -him in the desert, where there had been silence, a great deep muttering -was growing, like the first growling of a storm, and the ranks of -spears rippled like wheat before the wind.</p> - -<p>And Stark felt the slow running out of Kynon's blood inside him, where -Berild's dagger stood out from his back.</p> - -<p>They had headed Delgaun away from the path up the cliff. The two loose -mounts had been caught and held. They had tried to catch Delgaun, but -he was light and fast and slipped away from them. Now he broke back, -toward Kynon's great beast.</p> - -<p>Knock the dying man from the saddle, charge through the milling -chieftains, who were hampered by their own numbers in that narrow -space....</p> - -<p>He leaped. And the arms of Kynon, driven by the will of Eric John -Stark, encircled him and held him and would not let him go.</p> - -<p>The two men crashed to the ledge. Stark let out one harsh cry of agony, -and then was still, his hands locked around the Valkisian's throat, his -eyes intent and strange.</p> - -<p>Men came up, and he gasped, "He is mine," and they let him be.</p> - -<p>Delgaun did not die easily. He managed to get his dagger out, and -gashed the other's side until the naked ribs showed through. But once -again Stark's mind was free in some dark immensity of its own. He was -living again the dream he had in Valkis, and this was the end of the -dream. N'Chaka had a grip at last on the demon with yellow eyes that -hungered for his life, and he would not let go.</p> - -<p>The yellow eyes widened. They blazed, and then they slowly dimmed until -the last flicker of life was gone. The strength went out of N'Chaka's -hands. He fell forward, over his prey.</p> - -<p>Below, on the sand, Berild lay, and her outspread hair was as red as -blood in the fiery dawn.</p> - -<p>The men of Kesh and the men of Shun flowed in a resistless tide up -over the coral cliffs. The chieftains and the pipers and the link-boys -joined them, hunting the outlanders and the wolves of Valkis through -the streets of Sinharat.</p> - -<p>Unnoticed, a dark-haired girl ran down the path to the ledge. She bent -over the body of Kynon, pressing her hand to its heart. Tears ran down -and mingled with the blood.</p> - -<p>A low, faint moan came from the man's lips. Weeping like a child, -Fianna drew a tiny vial from her girdle and poured three drops of pale -liquid on the unresponsive tongue.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p class="ph1">XII</p> - -<p>He had come a long way. He had been down in the deep black valleys of -the Place of Darkness, and the iron frost was in his bones. He had -climbed the bitter mountains where no creature of the Twilight Belt -might go and live.</p> - -<p>There was light, now. He had been lost and wandering, but he had won -back to the light. His tribe, his people would be waiting for him. But -he knew that he would never see them.</p> - -<p>He remembered, then, with the old terrible loneliness, that they were -not truly his people. They had raised him, but they were not of his -blood.</p> - -<p>And he remembered also that they were dead, slain by the miners who had -needed all the water of the valley for themselves. Slain by the miners -who had taken N'Chaka and put him in a cage.</p> - -<p>With a start of terror, he thought he was again in that cage, with the -leering bearded faces peering in at him. But in the blinding dazzle of -light he could see no bars.</p> - -<p>There was only one face. The anxious, pitying face of a girl.</p> - -<p>Fianna.</p> - -<p>His brain began to clear. Memory returned bit by bit, the fragments -fitting themselves gradually into place.</p> - -<p>Kynon. Delgaun. Berild. Sinharat, the Ever-Living.</p> - -<p>He remembered now with perfect clarity that he was dying, and it -seemed a terrible thing to die in the body of another man. For the -first time, fully, he felt the separation from his own flesh. It seemed -a blasphemous thing, more terrible than death.</p> - -<p>Fianna was weeping. She stroked his hair, and whispered, "I am so glad. -I was afraid—afraid you would never wake."</p> - -<p>He was touched, because he knew that she loved him and would be sad. He -lifted his hand to touch her face, to comfort her.</p> - -<p>He saw the fingers of that hand, dark against her cheek. Dark....</p> - -<p>His own fingers. His own hand.</p> - -<p>He was not on the ledge. He was back in the coral crypt beneath the -palace. The light that had dazzled his eyes was not the sun, but only -the flare of torches.</p> - -<p>He sat up, his heart pounding wildly.</p> - -<p>Kynon of Shun lay beside him on the coral. He was quite dead, his head -encircled by a crown of fire, his side open to the white bone where -Delgaun's blade had struck.</p> - -<p>The wound that Kynon himself had never felt.</p> - -<p>The golden coffer was open. The second crown lay near Fianna, with the -rod beside it.</p> - -<p>Stark looked at her, deep into her eyes. Very softly he said, "I would -not have dreamed it."</p> - -<p>"You will understand, now—many things," she said. "And I was glad of -my power today, because I could truly give you life!"</p> - -<p>She rose, and he saw that she was very tired. Her voice was dull, as -though it counted over old things that no longer mattered.</p> - -<p>"You see why I was afraid. If <i>they</i> had ever suspected that I, too, -was of the Twice-Born ... Berild or Delgaun, each alone, I might have -destroyed, but I could not destroy both of them. And if I had, there -was still Kynon. You did what I could not, Eric John Stark."</p> - -<p>"Why were you against them, Fianna? How were you proof against the -poison that made them what they were?"</p> - -<p>She answered angrily, "Because I am weary of evil, of scheming for -power and shedding the blood of men as though they were sheep! I am no -better than Berild was. I, too, have lived a long time, and my hands -are not clean. But perhaps, by what you helped me do, I have made up a -little for my sins."</p> - -<p>She paused, her thoughts turned darkly inward, and it was strange to -see the shadow of age touching her sweet young face. Then she said, -very slowly, like an old, old woman speaking,</p> - -<p>"I am weary of living. No matter where I go, I am a stranger. You can -understand that, though not so well as I. There is an end to pleasure, -and after that only loneliness is left.</p> - -<p>"I have remembered that I was human once. That is why I set myself -against their plan of empire. After all these ages I have come round -full circle to the starting point, and things seem to me now as they -seemed then, before I was tempted by the Sending-on of Minds.</p> - -<p>"It is a wicked thing!" she cried suddenly. "Against nature and the -gods, and it has never brought anything but evil!"</p> - -<p>She caught up the rod and held it in her hands.</p> - -<p>"This is the last," she said. "Cities die, and nations perish, and -material things, even such as these, are destroyed. One by one the -Twice-Born have perished also, through accident or swift disease or -murder, as Berild would have slain Delgaun. Now only this, and I, are -left."</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Quite suddenly, she flung the rod against the coral, and it broke in a -cloudy flame and a tinkling of crystal shards. Then, one by one, she -broke the crowns.</p> - -<p>She stood still for a long moment. Then she whispered, "Now only I am -left."</p> - -<p>Again there was silence, and Stark was shaken by the magnitude of the -thing that she had done. Her slim girl's body somehow took on the -stature of a goddess.</p> - -<p>After a while he went to her and said awkwardly, "I have not thanked -you, Fianna. You brought me here, you saved me...."</p> - -<p>"Kiss me once, then," she answered, and raised her lips to his. "For I -love you, Eric John Stark—and that is the pity of it. Because I am not -for you, nor for any man."</p> - -<p>He kissed her, very tenderly, and there was the bitter taste of tears -on her soft lips.</p> - -<p>"Now come," she whispered, and took his hand.</p> - -<p>She led him back through the labyrinth, into the palace, and then out -again into the streets of Sinharat. Stark saw that it was sunset, and -that the city was deserted. The tribes of Kesh and Shun had broken camp -and gone.</p> - -<p>There was a beast ready for him, supplied with food and water. Fianna -asked him where he wished to go, and pointed the way to Tarak.</p> - -<p>"And you?" he asked. "Where will you go, little one?"</p> - -<p>"I have not thought." She lifted her head, and the wind played with her -dark hair. She did not smile, and yet suddenly Stark knew that she was -happy.</p> - -<p>"I am free of a great burden," she whispered. "I shall stay here for a -while, and think, and after that I shall know what to do. But whatever -it is there will be no evil in it, and in the end I shall rest."</p> - -<p>He mounted, and she looked up at him, with a look that wrung his heart -although it was not sad.</p> - -<p>"Go now," she said, "and the gods go with you."</p> - -<p>"And with you." He bent and kissed her once again, and then rode away, -down to the coral cliffs.</p> - -<p>Far out on the desert he turned and looked back, once, at the white -towers of Sinharat rising against the larger moon.</p> - - - - - - - - -<pre> - - - - - -End of Project Gutenberg's Queen of the Martian Catacombs, by Leigh Brackett - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK QUEEN OF THE MARTIAN CATACOMBS *** - -***** This file should be named 63956-h.htm or 63956-h.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/6/3/9/5/63956/ - -Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online -Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of -the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - -Title: Queen of the Martian Catacombs - -Author: Leigh Brackett - -Release Date: December 4, 2020 [EBook #63956] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: ASCII - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK QUEEN OF THE MARTIAN CATACOMBS *** - - - - -Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online -Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net - - - - - - - - - - Queen Of The Martian Catacombs - - By LEIGH BRACKETT - - Gaunt giant and passionate beauty, they dragged - their thirst-crazed way across the endless - crimson sands in a terrible test of endurance. - For one of them knew where cool life-giving - water lapped old stones smooth--a place of - secret horror that it was death to reveal! - - [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from - Planet Stories Summer 1949. - Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that - the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] - - -For hours the hard-pressed beast had fled across the Martian desert -with its dark rider. Now it was spent. It faltered and broke stride, -and when the rider cursed and dug his heels into the scaly sides, the -brute only turned its head and hissed at him. It stumbled on a few more -paces into the lee of a sandhill, and there it stopped, crouching down -in the dust. - -The man dismounted. The creature's eyes burned like green lamps in the -light of the little moons, and he knew that it was no use trying to -urge it on. He looked back, the way he had come. - -In the distance there were four black shadows grouped together in the -barren emptiness. They were running fast. In a few minutes they would -be upon him. - -He stood still, thinking what he should do next. Ahead, far ahead, was -a low ridge, and beyond the ridge lay Valkis and safety, but he could -never make it now. Off to his right, a lonely tor stood up out of the -blowing sand. There were tumbled rocks at its foot. - -"They tried to run me down in the open," he thought. "But here, by the -Nine Hells, they'll have to work for it!" - -He moved then, running toward the tor with a lightness and speed -incredible in anything but an animal or a savage. He was of Earth -stock, built tall, and more massive than he looked by reason of his -leanness. The desert wind was bitter cold, but he did not seem to -notice it, though he wore only a ragged shirt of Venusian spider silk, -open to the waist. His skin was almost as dark as his black hair, -burned indelibly by years of exposure to some terrible sun. His eyes -were startlingly light in colour, reflecting back the pale glow of the -moons. - -With the practised ease of a lizard he slid in among the loose and -treacherous rocks. Finding a vantage point, where his back was -protected by the tor itself, he crouched down. - -After that he did not move, except to draw his gun. There was something -eerie about his utter stillness, a quality of patience as unhuman as -the patience of the rock that sheltered him. - -The four black shadows came closer, resolved themselves into mounted -men. - -They found the beast, where it lay panting, and stopped. The line of -the man's footprints, already blurred by the wind but still plain -enough, showed where he had gone. - -The leader motioned. The others dismounted. Working with the swift -precision of soldiers, they removed equipment from their saddle-packs -and began to assemble it. - -The man crouching under the tor saw the thing that took shape. It was a -Banning shocker, and he knew that he was not going to fight his way out -of this trap. His pursuers were out of range of his own weapon. They -would remain so. The Banning, with its powerful electric beam, would -take him--dead or senseless, as they wished. - -He thrust the useless gun back into his belt. He knew who these -men were, and what they wanted with him. They were officers of the -Earth Police Control, bringing him a gift--twenty years in the Luna -cell-blocks. - -Twenty years in the grey catacombs, buried in the silence and the -eternal dark. - -He recognized the inevitable. He was used to inevitables--hunger, -pain, loneliness, the emptiness of dreams. He had accepted a lot of -them in his time. Yet he made no move to surrender. He looked out at -the desert and the night sky, and his eyes blazed, the desperate, -strangely beautiful eyes of a creature very close to the roots of -life, something less and more than man. His hands found a shard of rock -and broke it. - -The leader of the four men rode slowly toward the tor, his right arm -raised. - -His voice carried clearly on the wind. "Eric John Stark!" he called, -and the dark man tensed in the shadows. - -The rider stopped. He spoke again, but this time in a different tongue. -It was no dialect of Earth, Mars or Venus, but a strange speech, as -harsh and vital as the blazing Mercurian valleys that bred it. - -"_Oh N'Chaka, oh Man-without-a-tribe, I call you!_" - -There was a long silence. The rider and his mount were motionless under -the low moons, waiting. - -Eric John Stark stepped slowly out from the pool of blackness under the -tor. - -"Who calls me N'Chaka?" - -The rider relaxed somewhat. He answered in English, "You know perfectly -well who I am, Eric. May we meet in peace?" - -Stark shrugged. "Of course." - - * * * * * - -He walked on to meet the rider, who had dismounted, leaving his beast -behind. He was a slight, wiry man, this EPC officer, with the rawhide -look of the frontiers still on him. His hair was grizzled and his -sun-blackened skin was deeply lined, but there was nothing in the least -aged about his hard good-humored face nor his remarkably keen dark eyes. - -"It's been a long time, Eric," he said. - -Stark nodded. "Sixteen years." The two men studied each other for a -moment, and then Stark said, "I thought you were still on Mercury, -Ashton." - -"They've called all us experienced hands in to Mars." He held out -cigarettes. "Smoke?" - -Stark took one. They bent over Ashton's lighter, and then stood there -smoking while the wind blew red dust over their feet and the three men -of the patrol waited quietly beside the Banning. Ashton was taking no -chances. The electro-beam could stun without injury. - -Presently Ashton said, "I'm going to be crude, Eric. I'm going to -remind you of some things." - -"Save it," Stark retorted. "You've got me. There's no need to talk -about it." - -"Yes," said Ashton, "I've got you, and a damned hard time I've had -doing it. That's why I'm going to talk about it." - -His dark eyes met Stark's cold stare and held it. - -"Remember who I am--Simon Ashton. Remember who came along when the -miners in that valley on Mercury had a wild boy in a cage, and were -going to finish him off like they had the tribe that raised him. -Remember all the years after that, when I brought that boy up to be a -civilized human being." - -Stark laughed, not without a certain humor. "You should have left me in -the cage. I was caught a little old for civilizing." - -"Maybe. I don't think so. Anyway, I'm reminding you," Ashton said. - -Stark said, with no particular bitterness, "You don't have to get -sentimental. I know it's your job to take me in." - -Ashton said deliberately, "I won't take you in, Eric, unless you make -me." He went on then, rapidly, before Stark could answer. "You've -got a twenty-year sentence hanging over you, for running guns to the -Middle-Swamp tribes when they revolted against Terro-Venusian Metals, -and a couple of similar jobs. - -"All right. So I know why you did it, and I won't say I don't agree -with you. But you put yourself outside the law, and that's that. Now -you're on your way to Valkis. You're headed into a mess that'll put you -on Luna for life, the next time you're caught." - -"And this time you don't agree with me." - -"No. Why do you think I broke my neck to catch you before you got -there?" Ashton bent closer, his face very intent. "Have you made any -deal with Delgaun of Valkis? Did he send for you?" - -"He sent for me, but there's no deal yet. I'm on the beach. Broke. I -got a message from this Delgaun, whoever he is, that there was going to -be a private war back in the Drylands, and he'd pay me to help fight -it. After all, that's my business." - -Ashton shook his head. - -"This isn't a private war, Eric. It's something a lot bigger and -nastier than that. The Martian Council of City-States and the Earth -Commission are both in a cold sweat, and no one can find out exactly -what's going on. You know what the Low-Canal towns are--Valkis, -Jekkara, Barrakesh. No law-abiding Martian, let alone an Earthman, -can last five minutes in them. And the back-blocks are absolutely -_verboten_. So all we get is rumors. - -"Fantastic rumors about a barbarian chief named Kynon, who seems to be -promising heaven and earth to the tribes of Kesh and Shun--some wild -stuff about the ancient cult of the Ramas that everybody thought was -dead a thousand years ago. We know that Kynon is tied up somehow with -Delgaun, who is a most efficient bandit, and we know that some of the -top criminals of the whole System are filtering in to join up. Knighton -and Walsh of Terra, Themis of Mercury, Arrod of Callisto Colony--and, I -believe, your old comrade in arms, Luhar the Venusian." - -Stark gave a slight start, and Ashton smiled briefly. - -"Oh, yes," he said. "I heard about that." Then he sobered. "You can -figure that set-up for yourself, Eric. The barbarians are going to go -out and fight some kind of a holy war, to suit the entirely unholy -purposes of men like Delgaun and the others. - -"Half a world is going to be raped, blood is going to run deep in -the Drylands--and it will all be barbarian blood spilled for a lying -promise, and the carrion crows of Valkis will get fat on it. Unless, -somehow, we can stop it." - - * * * * * - -He paused, then said flatly, "I want you to go on to Valkis, Eric--but -as my agent. I won't put it on the grounds that you'd be doing -civilization a service. You don't owe anything to civilization, Lord -knows. But you might save a lot of your own kind of people from getting -slaughtered, to say nothing of the border-state Martians who'll be the -first to get Kynon's axe. - -"Also, you could wipe that twenty-year hitch on Luna off the slate, -maybe even work up a desire to make a man of yourself, instead of a -sort of tiger wandering from one kill to the next." He added, "If you -live." - -Stark said slowly, "You're clever Ashton. You know I've got a feeling -for all planetary primitives like those who raised me, and you appeal -to that." - -"Yes," said Ashton, "I'm clever. But I'm not a liar. What I've told you -is true." - -Stark carefully ground out the cigarette beneath his heel. Then he -looked up. "Suppose I agree to become your agent in this, and go off to -Valkis. What's to prevent me from forgetting all about you, then?" - -Ashton said softly, "Your word, Eric. You get to know a man pretty well -when you know him from boyhood on up. Your word is enough." - -There was a silence, and then Stark held out his hand. "All right, -Simon--but only for this one deal. After that, no promises." - -"Fair enough." They shook hands. - -"I can't give you any suggestions," Ashton said. "You're on your own, -completely. You can get in touch with me through the Earth Commission -office in Tarak. You know where that is?" - -Stark nodded. "On the Dryland Border." - -"Good luck to you, Eric." - -He turned, and they walked back together to where the three men waited. -Ashton nodded, and they began to dismantle the Banning. Neither they -nor Ashton looked back, as they rode away. - -Stark watched them go. He filled his lungs with the cold air, and -stretched. Then he roused the beast out of the sand. It had rested, and -was willing to carry him again as long as he did not press it. He set -off again, across the desert. - -The ridge grew as he approached it, looming into a low mountain chain -much worn by the ages. A pass opened before him, twisting between the -hills of barren rock. - -He traversed it, coming out at the farther end above the basin of -a dead sea. The lifeless land stretched away into darkness, a vast -waste of desolation more lonely even than the desert. And between the -sea bottom and the foothills, Stark saw the lights of Valkis. - - - II - -There were many lights, far below. Tiny pinpricks of flame where -torches burned in the streets beside the Low-Canal--the thread of black -water that was all that remained of a forgotten ocean. - -Stark had never been here before. Now he looked at the city that -sprawled down the slope under the low moons, and shivered, the -primitive twitching of the nerves that an animal feels in the presence -of death. - -For the streets where the torches flared were only a tiny part of -Valkis. The life of the city had flowed downward from the cliff-tops, -following the dropping level of the sea. Five cities, the oldest -scarcely recognizable as a place of human habitation. Five harbors, the -docks and quays still standing, half buried in the dust. - -Five ages of Martian history, crowned on the topmost level with the -ruined palace of the old pirate kings of Valkis. The towers still -stood, broken but indomitable, and in the moonlight they had a sleeping -look, as though they dreamed of blue water and the sound of waves, and -of tall ships coming in heavy with treasure. - -Stark picked his way slowly down the steep descent. There was something -fascinating to him in the stone houses, roofless and silent in the -night. The paving blocks still showed the rutting of wheels where -carters had driven to the market-place, and princes had gone by in -gilded chariots. The quays were scarred where ships had lain against -them, rising and falling with the tides. - -Stark's senses had developed in a strange school, and the thin veneer -of civilization he affected had not dulled them. Now it seemed to him -that the wind had the echoes of voices in it, and the smell of spices -and fresh-spilled blood. - -He was not surprised when, in the last level above the living town, -armed men came out of the shadows and stopped him. - -They were lean, dark men, very wiry and light of foot, and their faces -were the faces of wolves--not primitive wolves at all, but beasts of -prey that had been civilized for so many thousands of years that they -could afford to forget it. - -They were most courteous, and Stark would not have cared to disobey -their request. - -He gave his name. "Delgaun sent for me." - -The leader of the Valkisians nodded his narrow head. "You're expected." -His sharp eyes had taken in every feature of the Earthman, and Stark -knew that his description had been memorized down to the last detail. -Valkis guarded its doors with care. - -"Ask in the city," said the sentry. "Anyone can direct you to the -palace." - -Stark nodded and went on, down through the long-dead streets in the -moonlight and the silence. - -With shocking suddenness, he was plunged into the streets of the living. - -It was very late now, but Valkis was awake and stirring. Seething, -rather. The narrow twisting ways were crowded. The laughter of women -came down from the flat roofs. Torchlight flared, gold and scarlet, -lighting the wineshops, making blacker the shadows of the alley-mouths. - -Stark left his beast at a _serai_ on the edge of the canal. The -paddocks were already jammed. Stark recognized the long-legged brutes -of the Dryland breed, and as he left a caravan passed him, coming in, -with a jangling of bronze bangles and a great hissing and stamping in -the dust. - -The riders were tall barbarians--Keshi, Stark thought, from the way -they braided their tawny hair. They wore plain leather, and their -blue-eyed women rode like queens. - -Valkis was full of them. For days, it seemed, they must have poured -in across the dead sea bottom, from the distant oases and the barren -deserts of the back-blocks. Brawny warriors of Kesh and Shun, making -holiday beside the Low-Canal, where there was more water than any of -them had seen in their lives. - -They were in Valkis, these barbarians, but they were not part of it. -Shouldering his way through the streets, Stark got the peculiar flavor -of the town, that he guessed could never be touched or changed by -anything. - -In a square, a girl danced to the music of harp and drum. The air was -heavy with the smell of wine and burning pitch and incense. A lithe, -swart Valkisian in his bright kilt and jewelled girdle leaped out and -danced with the girl, his teeth flashing as he whirled and postured. In -the end he bore her off, laughing, her black hair hanging down his back. - -Women looked at Stark. Women graceful as cats, bare to the waist, their -skirts slit at the sides above the thigh, wearing no ornaments but the -tiny golden bells that are the particular property of the Low-Canal -towns, so that the air is always filled with their delicate, wanton -chiming. - -Valkis had a laughing, wicked soul. Stark had been in many places in -his life, but never one before that beat with such a pulse of evil, -incredibly ancient, but strong and gay. - -He found the palace at last--a great rambling structure of quarried -stone, with doors and shutters of beaten bronze closed against the dust -and the incessant wind. He gave his name to the guard and was taken -inside, through halls hung with antique tapestries, the flagged floors -worn hollow by countless generations of sandalled feet. - - * * * * * - -Again, Stark's half-wild senses told him that life within these walls -had not been placid. The very stones whispered of age-old violence, the -shadows were heavy with the lingering ghosts of passion. - -He was brought before Delgaun, the lord of Valkis, in the big central -room that served as his headquarters. - -Delgaun was lean and catlike, after the fashion of his race. His black -hair showed a stippling of silver, and the hard beauty of his face was -strongly marked, the lines drawn deep and all the softness of youth -long gone away. He wore a magnificent harness, and his eyes, under fine -dark brows, were like drops of hot gold. - -He looked up as the Earthman came in, one swift penetrating glance. -Then he said, "You're Stark." - -There was something odd about those yellow eyes, bright and keen as a -killer hawk's yet somehow secret, as though the true thoughts behind -them would never show through. Instinctively, Stark disliked the man. - -But he nodded and came up to the council table, turning his attention -to the others in the room. A handful of Martians--Low-Canallers, chiefs -and fighting men from their ornaments and their proud looks--and -several outlanders, their conventional garments incongruous in this -place. - -Stark knew them all. Knighton and Walsh of Terra, Themis of Mercury, -Arrod of Callisto Colony--and Luhar of Venus. Pirates, thieves, -renegades, and each one an expert in his line. - -Ashton was right. There was something big, something very big and very -ugly, shaping between Valkis and the Drylands. - -But that was only a quick, passing thought in Stark's mind. It was on -Luhar that his attention centered. Bitter memory and hatred had come to -savage life within him as soon as he saw the Venusian. - -The man was handsome. A cashiered officer of the crack Venusian Guards, -very slim, very elegant, his pale hair cropped short and curling, his -dark tunic fitting him like a second skin. - -He said, "The aborigine! I thought we had enough barbarians here -without sending for more." - -Stark said nothing. He began to walk toward Luhar. - -Luhar said sharply, "There's no use in getting nasty, Stark. Past -scores are past. We're on the same side now." - -The Earthman spoke, then, with a peculiar gentleness. - -"We were on the same side once before. Against Terro-Venus Metals. -Remember?" - -"I remember very well!" Luhar was speaking now not to Stark alone, -but to everyone in the room. "I remember that your innocent barbarian -friends had me tied to the block there in the swamps, and that you -were watching the whole thing with honest pleasure. If the Company men -hadn't come along, I'd be screaming there yet." - -"You sold us out," Stark said. "You had it coming." - -He continued to walk toward Luhar. - -Delgaun spoke. He did not raise his voice, yet Stark felt the impact of -his command. - -"There will be no fighting here," Delgaun said. "You are both hired -mercenaries, and while you take my pay you will forget your private -quarrels. Do you understand?" - -Luhar nodded and sat down, smiling out of the corner of his mouth at -Stark, who stood looking with narrowed eyes at Delgaun. - -He was still half blind with his anger against Luhar. His hands ached -for the kill. But even so, he recognized the power in Delgaun. - -A sound shockingly akin to the growl of a beast echoed in his throat. -Then, gradually, he relaxed. The man Delgaun he would have challenged. -But to do so would wreck the mission that he had promised to carry out -here for Ashton. - -He shrugged, and joined the others at the table. - -Walsh of Terra rose abruptly and began to prowl back and forth. - -"How much longer do we have to wait?" he demanded. - -Delgaun poured wine into a bronze goblet. "Don't expect me to know," he -snapped. He shoved the flagon along the table toward Stark. - -Stark helped himself. The wine was warm and sweet on his tongue. He -drank slowly, sitting relaxed and patient while the others smoked -nervously or rose to pace up and down. - -Stark wondered what, or who, they were waiting for. But he did not ask. - -Time went by. - -Stark raised his head, listening. "What's that?" - -Their duller ears had heard nothing, but Delgaun rose and flung open -the shutters of the window near him. - -The Martian dawn, brilliant and clear, flooded the dead sea bottom with -harsh light. Beyond the black line of the canal a caravan was coming -toward Valkis through the blowing dust. - -It was no ordinary caravan. Warriors rode before and behind, their -spearheads blazing in the sunrise. Jewelled trappings on the beasts, a -litter with curtains of crimson silk, barbaric splendor. Clear and thin -on the air came the wild music of pipes and the deep-throated throbbing -of drums. - -Stark guessed without being told who it was that rode out of the desert -like a king. - -Delgaun made a harsh sound in his throat. "It's Kynon, at last!" he -said, and swung around from the window. His eyes sparkled with some -private amusement. "Let us go and welcome the Giver of Life!" - -Stark went with them, out into the crowded streets. A silence had -fallen on the town. Valkisian and barbarian alike were caught now in a -breathless excitement, pressing through the narrow ways, flowing toward -the canal. - -Stark found himself beside Delgaun in the great square of the slave -market, standing on the auction block, above the heads of the throng. -The stillness, the expectancy of the crowd were uncanny.... - -To the measured thunder of drums and the wild skirling of desert pipes, -Kynon of Shun came into Valkis. - - - III - -Straight into the square of the slave market the caravan came, and the -people pressed back against the walls to make way for them. Stamping of -padded hoofs on the stones, ring and clash of harness, brave glitter -of spears and the great two-handed broadswords of the Drylands, with -drumbeats to shake the heart and the savage cry of the pipes to set -the blood leaping. Stark could not restrain an appreciative thrill in -himself. - -The advance guard reached the slave block. Then, with deafening -abruptness, the drummers crossed their sticks and the pipers ceased, -and there was utter silence in the square. - -It lasted for almost a minute, and then from every barbarian throat the -name of Kynon roared out until the stones of the city echoed with it. - -A man leaped from the back of his mount to the block, standing at its -outer edge where all could see, his hands flung up. - -"I greet you, my brothers!" - -And the cheering went on. - -Stark studied Kynon, surprised that he was so young. He had expected a -gray-bearded prophet, and instead, here was a brawny-shouldered man of -war standing as tall as himself. - -Kynon's eyes were a bright, compelling blue, and his face was the face -of a young eagle. His voice had deep music in it--the kind of voice -that can sway crowds to madness. - -Stark looked from him to the rapt faces of the people--even the -Valkisians had caught the mood--and thought that Kynon was the most -dangerous man he had ever seen. This tawny-haired barbarian in his kilt -of bronze-bossed leather was already half a god. - -Kynon shouted to the captain of his warriors, "Bring the captive -and the old man!" Then he turned again to the crowd, urging them -to silence. When at last the square was still, his voice rang -challengingly across it. - -"There are still those who doubt me. Therefore I have come to Valkis, -and this day--now!--I will show proof that I have not lied!" - -A roar and a mutter from the crowd. Kynon's men were lifting to the -block a tottering ancient so bowed with years that he could barely -stand, and a youth of Terran stock. The boy was in chains. The old -man's eyes burned, and he looked at the boy beside him with a terrible -joy. - -Stark settled down to watch. The litter with the curtains of crimson -silk was now beside the block. A girl, a Valkisian, stood beside it, -looking up. It seemed to Stark that her green eyes rested on Kynon with -a smouldering anger. - -He glanced away from the serving girl, and saw that the curtains were -partly open. A woman lay on the cushions within. He could not see much -of her, except that her hair was like dark flame and she was smiling, -looking at the old man and the naked boy. Then her glance, very dark in -the shadows of the litter, shifted away and Stark followed it and saw -Delgaun. Every muscle of Delgaun's body was drawn taut, and he seemed -unable to look away from the woman in the litter. - -Stark smiled, very slightly. The outlanders were cynically absorbed -in what was going on. The crowd had settled again to that silent, -breathless tension. The sun blazed down out of the empty sky. The dust -blew, and the wind was sharp with the smell of living flesh. - -The old man reached out and touched the boy's smooth shoulder, and his -gums showed bluish as he laughed. - -Kynon was speaking again. - -"There are still those who doubt me, I say! Those who scoffed when I -said that I possessed the ancient secret of the Ramas of long ago--the -secret by which one man's mind may be transferred into another's body. -But none of you after today will doubt that I hold that secret! - -"I, myself, am not a Rama." He glanced down along his powerful frame, -half-consciously flexing his muscles, and laughed. "Why should I be a -Rama? I have no need, as yet, for the Sending-on of Minds!" - -Answering laughter, half ribald, from the crowd. - -"No," said Kynon, "I am not a Rama. I am a man like you. Like you, I -have no wish to grow old, and in the end, to die." - -He swung abruptly to the old man. - -"You, Grandfather! Would you not wish to be young again--to ride out to -battle, to take the woman of your choice?" - -The old man wailed, "Yes! Yes!" and his gaze dwelt hungrily upon the -boy. - -"And you shall be!" The strength of a god rang in Kynon's voice. He -turned again to the crowd and cried out, - -"For years I suffered in the desert alone, searching for the lost -secret of the Ramas. And I found it, my brothers! I hold their ancient -power. I alone--in these two hands I hold it, and with it I shall begin -a new era for our Dryland races! - -"There will be fighting, yes. There will be bloodshed. But when that is -over and the men of Kesh and Shun are free from their ancient bondage -of thirst and the men of the Low-Canals have regained their own--then -I shall give new life, unending life, to all who have followed me. -The aged and lamed and wounded can choose new bodies from among the -captives. There will be no more age, no more sickness, no more death!" - -A rippling, shivering sigh from the crowd. Eyeballs gleaming in the -bitter light, mouths open on the hunger that is nearest to the human -soul. - -"Lest anyone still doubt my promise," said Kynon, "watch. Watch--and I -will show you!" - -They watched. Not stirring, hardly breathing, they watched. - - * * * * * - -The drums struck up a slow and solemn beat. The captain of the -warriors, with an escort of six men, marched to the litter and took -from the woman's hands a bundle wrapped in silks. Bearing it as though -it were precious beyond belief, he came to the block and lifted it up, -and Kynon took it from him. - -The silken wrappings fluttered loose, fell away. And in Kynon's hands -gleamed two crystal crowns and a shining rod. - -He held them high, the sunlight glancing in cold fire from the crystal. - -"Behold!" he said. "The Crowns of the Ramas!" - -The crowd drew breath then, one long rasping _Ah!_ - -The solemn drumbeat never faltered. It was as though the pulse of -the whole world throbbed within it. Kynon turned. The old man began -to tremble. Kynon placed one crown on his wrinkled scalp, and the -tottering creature winced as though in pain, but his face was ecstatic. - -Relentlessly, Kynon crowned with the second circlet the head of the -frightened boy. - -"Kneel," he said. - -They knelt. Standing tall above them, Kynon held the rod in his two -hands, between the crystal crowns. - -Light was born in the rod. It was no reflection of the sun. Blue and -brilliant, it flashed along the rod and leaped from it to wake an -answering brilliance in the crowns, so that the old man and the youth -were haloed with a chill, supernal fire. - -The drumbeat ceased. The old man cried out. His hands plucked feebly at -his head, then went to his breast and clenched there. Quite suddenly -he fell forward over his knees. A convulsive tremor shook him. Then he -lay still. - -The boy swayed and then fell forward also, with a clashing of chains. - -The light died out of the crowns. Kynon stood a moment longer, rigid as -a statue, holding the rod which still flickered with blue lightning. -Then that also died. - -Kynon lowered the rod. In a ringing voice he cried, "Arise, -Grandfather!" - -The boy stirred. Slowly, very slowly, he rose to his feet. Holding out -his hands, he stared at them, and then touched his thighs, and his flat -belly, and the deep curve of his chest. - -Up the firm young throat the wondering fingers went, to the smooth -cheeks, to the thick fair hair above the crown. A cry broke from him. - -With the perfect accent of the Drylands, the Earth boy cried in -Martian, "I am in the youth's body! I am young again!" - -A scream, a wail of ecstasy, burst from the crowd. It swayed like a -great beast, white faces turned upward. The boy fell down and embraced -Kynon's knees. - -Eric John Stark found that he himself was trembling slightly. He -glanced at Delgaun and the outlanders. The Valkisian wore a look of -intense satisfaction under his mask of awe. The others were almost as -rapt and open-mouthed as the crowd. - -Stark turned his head slightly and looked down at the litter. One -white hand was already drawing the curtains, so that the scarlet silk -appeared to shake with silent laughter. - -The serving girl beside it had not moved. Still she looked up at Kynon, -and there was nothing in her eyes but hate. - -After that there was bedlam, the rush and trample of the crowd, the -beating of drums, the screaming of pipes, deafening uproar. The crowns -and the crystal rod were wrapped again and taken away. Kynon raised up -the boy and struck off the chains of captivity. He mounted, with the -boy beside him. Delgaun walked before him through the streets, and so -did the outlanders. - -The body of the old man was disregarded, except by some of Kynon's -barbarians who wrapped it in a white cloth and took it away. - -Kynon of Shun came in triumph to Delgaun's palace. Standing beside -the litter, he gave his hand to the woman, who stepped out and walked -beside him through the bronze door. - -The women of Shun are tall and strong, bred to stand beside their men -in war as well as love, and this red-haired daughter of the Drylands -was enough to stop a man's heart with her proud step and her white -shoulders, and her eyes that were the color of smoke. Stark's gaze -followed her from a distance. - -Presently in the council room were gathered Delgaun and the outlanders, -Kynon and his bright-haired queen--and no other Martians but those -three. - -Kynon sprawled out in the high seat at the head of the table. His face -was beaming. He wiped the sweat off it, and then filled a goblet with -wine, looking around the room with his bright blue eyes. - -"Fill up, gentlemen. I'll give you a toast." He lifted the goblet. -"Here's to the secret of the Ramas, and the gift of life!" - -Stark put down his goblet, still empty. He stared directly at Kynon. - -"You have no secret," said Stark deliberately. - -Kynon sat perfectly still, except that, very slowly, he put his own -goblet down. Nobody else moved. - -Stark's voice sounded loud in the stillness. - -"Furthermore," he said, "that demonstration in the square was a lie -from beginning to end." - - - IV - -Stark's words had the effect of an electric shock on the listeners. -Delgaun's black brows went up, and the woman came forward a little to -stare at the Earthman with profound interest. - -Kynon asked a question, of nobody in particular. "Who," he demanded, -"is this great black ape?" - -Delgaun told him. - -"Ah, yes," said Kynon. "Eric John Stark, the wild man from Mercury." He -scowled threateningly. "Very well--explain how I lied in the square!" - -"Certainly. First of all, the Earth boy was a prisoner. He was told -what he had to do to save his neck, and then was carefully coached in -his part. Secondly, the crystal rod and the crowns are a fake. You -used a simple Purcell unit in the rod to produce an electronic brush -discharge. That made the blue light. Thirdly, you gave the old man -poison, probably by means of a sharp point on the crown. I saw him -wince when you put it on him." - -Stark paused. "The old man died. The boy went through his sham. And -that was that." - -Again there was a flat silence. Luhar crouched over the table, his face -avid with hope. The woman's eyes dwelt on Stark and did not turn away. - -Then, suddenly, Kynon laughed. He roared with it until the tears ran. - -"It was a good show, though," he said at last. "Damned good. You'll -have to admit that. The crowd swallowed it, horns, hoofs and hide." - -He got up and came round to Stark, clapping him on the shoulder, a blow -that would have laid a lesser man flat. - -"I like you, wild man. Nobody else here had the guts to speak out, but -I'll give you odds they were all thinking the same thing." - -Stark said, "Just where were you, Kynon, during those years you were -supposed to be suffering alone in the desert?" - -"Curious, aren't you? Well, I'll let you in on a secret." Kynon lapsed -abruptly into perfectly good colloquial English. "I was on Terra, -learning about things like the Purcell electronic discharge." - -Reaching over, he poured wine for Stark and held it out to him. "Now -you know. Now we all know. So let's wash the dust out of our throats -and get down to business." - -Stark said, "No." - -Kynon looked at him. "What now?" - -"You're lying to your people," Stark said flatly. "You're making false -promises, to lead them into war." - -Kynon was genuinely puzzled by Stark's anger. "But of course!" he -said. "Is there anything new or strange in that?" - -Luhar spoke up, his voice acid with hate. "Watch out for him, Kynon. -He'll sell you out, he'll cut your throat, if he thinks it best for the -barbarians." - -Delgaun said, "Stark's reputation is known all over the system. There's -no need to tell us that again." - -"No." Kynon shook his head, looking very candidly at Stark. "We sent -for you, didn't we, knowing that? All right." - -He stepped back a little, so that the others were included in what he -was going to say. - -"My people have a just cause for war. They go hungry and thirsty, while -the City-States along the Dryland Border hog all the water sources and -grow fat. Do you know what it means to watch your children die crying -for water on a long march, to come at last to the oasis and find the -well sanded in by a storm, and go on again, trying to save your people -and your herd? Well, I do! I was born and bred in the Drylands, and -many a time I've cursed the border states with a tongue like a dry -stick. - -"Stark, you should know the workings of the barbarian mind as well -as I do. The men of Kesh and Shun are traditional enemies. Raiding -and thieving, open warfare over water and grass. I had to give them a -rallying point--a faith strong enough to unite them. Resurrecting the -Rama legend was the only hope I had. - -"And it has worked. The tribes are one people now. They can go on and -take what belongs to them--the right to live. I'm not really so far out -in my promises, at that. Now do you understand?" - - * * * * * - -Stark studied him, with his cold cat-eyes. "Where do the men of Valkis -come in--the men of Jekkara and Barrakesh? Where do _we_ come in, the -hired bravoes?" - -Kynon smiled. It was a perfectly sincere smile, and it had no humor in -it, only a great pride and a cheerful cruelty. - -"We're going to build an empire," he said softly. "The City-States are -disorganized, too starved or too fat to fight. And Earth is taking us -over. Before long, Mars will be hardly more than another Luna. - -"We're going to fight that. Drylander and Low-Canaller together, we're -going to build a power out of dust and blood--and there will be loot in -plenty to go round." - -"That's where my men come in," said Delgaun, and laughed. "We -Low-Canallers live by rapine." - -"And you," said Kynon, "the 'hired bravoes', are in it to help. I -need you and the Venusian, Stark, to train my men, to plan campaigns, -to give me all you know of guerrilla fighting. Knighton has a fast -cruiser. He'll bring us supplies from outside. Walsh is a genius, they -tell me, at fashioning weapons. Themis is a mechanic, and also the -cleverest thief this side of hell--saving your presence, Delgaun! Arrod -organized and bossed the Brotherhood of the Little Worlds, which had -the Space Patrol going mad for years. He can do the same for us. So -there you have it. Now, Stark, what do you say?" - -The Earthman answered slowly, "I'll go along with you--as long as no -harm comes to the tribes." - -Kynon laughed. "No need to worry about that." - -"Just one more question," Stark said. "What's going to happen when the -people find out that this Rama stuff is just a myth?" - -"They won't," said Kynon. "The crowns will be destroyed in battle, and -it will be very tragic, but very final. No one knows how to make more -of them. Oh, I can handle the people! They'll be happy enough, with -good land and water." - -He looked around then and said plaintively, "And now can we sit down -and drink like civilized men?" - -They sat. The wine went round, and the vultures of Valkis drank to each -other's luck and loot, and Stark learned that the woman's name was -Berild. - -Kynon was happy. He had made his point with the people, and he was -celebrating. But Stark noticed that though his tongue grew thick, it -did not loosen. - -Luhar grew steadily more morose and silent, glancing covertly across -the table at Stark. Delgaun toyed with his goblet, and his yellow gaze -which gave nothing away moved restlessly between Berild and Stark. - -Berild drank not at all. She sat a little apart, with her face in -shadow, and her red mouth smiled. Her thoughts, too, were her own -secret. But Stark knew that she was still watching him, and he knew -that Delgaun was aware of it. - -Presently Kynon said, "Delgaun and I have some talking to do, so I'll -bid you gentlemen farewell for the present. You, Stark, and Luhar--I'm -going back into the desert at midnight, and you're going with me, so -you'd better get some sleep." - -Stark nodded. He rose and went out, with the others. - -An attendant showed him to his quarters, in the north wing. Stark had -not rested for twenty-four hours, and he was glad of the chance to -sleep. - -He lay down. The wine spun in his head, and Berild's smile mocked him. -Then his thoughts turned to Ashton, and his promise. Presently he -slept, and dreamed. - - * * * * * - -He was a boy on Mercury again, running down a path that led from a cave -mouth to the floor of a valley. Above him the mountains rose into the -sky and were lost beyond the shallow atmosphere. The rocks danced in -the terrible heat, but the soles of his feet were like iron, and trod -them lightly. He was quite naked. - -The blaze of the sun between the valley walls was like the shining -heart of Hell. It did not seem to the boy N'Chaka that it could ever be -cold again, yet he knew that when darkness came there would be ice on -the shallows of the river. The gods were constantly at war. - -He passed a place, ruined by earthquake. It was a mine, and N'Chaka -remembered dimly that he had once lived there, with several -white-skinned creatures shaped like himself. He went on without a -second glance. - -He was searching for Tika. When he was old enough, he would mate with -her. He wanted to hunt with her now, for she was fleet and as keen as -he at scenting out the great lizards. - -He heard her voice calling his name. There was terror in it, and -N'Chaka began to run. He saw her, crouched between two huge boulders, -her light fur stained with blood. - -A vast black-winged shadow swooped down upon him. It glared at him with -its yellow eyes, and its long beak tore at him. He thrust his spear at -it, but talons hooked into his shoulder, and the golden eyes were close -to him, bright and full of death. - -He knew those eyes. Tika screamed, but the sound faded, everything -faded but those eyes. He sprang up, grappling with the thing.... - -A man's voice yelling, a man's hands thrusting him away. The dream -receded. Stark came back to reality, dropping the scared attendant who -had come to waken him. - -The man cringed away from him. "Delgaun sent me. He wants you--in the -council room." Then he turned and fled. - - * * * * * - -Stark shook himself. The dream had been terribly real. He went down to -the council room. It was dusk now, and the torches were lighted. - -Delgaun was waiting, and Berild sat beside him at the table. They were -alone there. Delgaun looked up, with his golden eyes. - -"I have a job for you, Stark," he said. "You remember the captain of -Kynon's men, in the square today?" - -"I do." - -"His name is Freka, and he's a good man, but he's addicted to a certain -vice. He'll be up to his ears in it by now, and somebody has to get him -back by the time Kynon leaves. Will you see to it?" - -Stark glanced at Berild. It seemed to him that she was amused, whether -at him or at Delgaun he could not tell. He asked, - -"Where will I find him?" - -"There's only one place where he can get his particular poison--Kala's, -out on the edge of Valkis. It's in the old city, beyond the lower -quays." Delgaun smiled. "You may have to be ready with your fists, -Stark. Freka may not want to come." - -Stark hesitated. Then, "I'll do my best," he said, and went out into -the dusky streets of Valkis. - -He crossed a square, heading away from the palace. A twisting lane -swallowed him up. And quite suddenly, someone took his arm and said -rapidly, - -"Smile at me, and then turn aside into the alley." - -The hand on his arm was small and brown, the voice very pretty with its -accompaniment of little chiming bells. He smiled, as she had bade him, -and turned aside into the alley, which was barely more than a crack -between two rows of houses. - -Swiftly, he put his hands against the wall, so that the girl was -prisoned between them. A green-eyed girl, with golden bells braided in -her black hair, and impudent breasts bare above a jewelled girdle. A -handsome girl, with a proud look to her. - -The serving girl who had stood beside the litter in the square, and had -watched Kynon with such bleak hatred. - -"Well," said Stark. "And what do you want with me, little one?" - -She answered, "My name is Fianna. And I do not intend to kill you, -neither will I run away." - -Stark let his hands drop. "Did you follow me, Fianna?" - -"I did. Delgaun's palace is full of hidden ways, and I know them all. I -was listening behind the panel in the council room. I heard you speak -out against Kynon, and I heard Delgaun's order, just now." - -"So?" - -"So, if you meant what you said about the tribes, you had better -get away now, while you have the chance. Kynon lied to you. He will -use you, and then kill you, as he will use and then destroy his own -people." Her voice was hot with bitter fury. - -Stark gave her a slow smile that might have meant anything, or nothing. - -"You're a Valkisian, Fianna. What do you care what happens to the -barbarians?" - -Her slightly tilted green eyes looked scornfully into his. - -"I'm not trying to trap you, Earthman. I hate Kynon. And my mother was -a woman of the desert." - -She paused, then went on sombrely, "Also, I serve the lady Berild, and -I have learned many things. There is trouble coming, greater trouble -than Kynon knows." She asked, suddenly, "What do you know of the -Ramas?" - -"Nothing," he answered, "except that they don't exist now, if they ever -did." - -Fianna gave him an odd look. "Perhaps they don't. Will you listen to -me, Earthman from Mercury? Will you get away, now that you know you're -marked for death?" - -Stark said, "No." - -"Even if I tell you that Delgaun has set a trap for you at Kala's?" - -"No. But I will thank you for your warning, Fianna." - -He bent and kissed her, because she was very young and honest. Then he -turned and went on his way. - - - V - -Night came swiftly. Stark left behind him the torches and the laughter -and the sounding harps, coming into the streets of the old city where -there was nothing but silence and the light of the low moons. - -He saw the lower quays, great looming shapes of marble rounded and worn -by time, and went toward them. Presently he found that he was following -a faint but definite path, threaded between the ancient houses. It was -very still, so that the dry whisper of the drifting dust was audible. - -He passed under the shadow of the quays, and turned into a broad way -that had once led up from the harbor. A little way ahead, on the other -side, he saw a tall building half fallen in ruin. Its windows were -shuttered, barred with light, and from it came the sound of voices and -a thin thread of music, very reedy and evil. - -Stark approached it, slipping through the ragged shadows as though he -had no more weight to him than a drift of smoke. Once a door banged and -a man came out of Kala's and passed by, going down to Valkis. Stark saw -his face in the moonlight. It was the face of a beast, rather than a -man. He muttered to himself as he went, and once he laughed, and Stark -felt a loathing in him. - -He waited until the sound of footsteps had died away. The ruined -houses gave no sign of danger. A lizard rustled between the stones, and -that was all. The moonlight lay bright and still on Kala's door. - -Stark found a little shard of rock and tossed it, so that it made a -sharp snicking sound against the shadowed wall beyond him. Then he held -his breath, listening. - -No one, nothing, stirred. Only the dry wind sighed in the empty houses. - -Stark went out, across the open space, and nothing happened. He flung -open the door of Kala's dive. - -Yellow light spilled out, and a choking wave of hot and stuffy air. -Inside, there were tall lamps with quartz lenses, each of which poured -down a beam of throbbing, gold-orange light. And in the little pools of -radiance, on filthy furs and cushions on the floor, lay men and women -whose faces were slack and bestial. - -Stark realized now what secret vice Kala sold here. Shanga--the -going-back--the radiation that caused temporary artificial atavism and -let men wallow for a time in beasthood. It was supposed to have been -stamped out when the Lady Fand's dark Shanga ring had been destroyed. -But it still persisted, in places like this outside the law. - -He looked for Freka, and recognized the tall barbarian. He was sprawled -under one of the Shanga-lamps, eyes closed, face brutish, growling and -twitching in sleep like the beast he had temporarily become. - -A voice spoke from behind Stark's shoulder. "I am Kala. What do you -wish, Outlander?" - -He turned. Kala might have been beautiful once, a thousand years ago as -you reckon sin. She wore still the sweet chiming bells in her hair, and -Stark thought of Fianna. The woman's ravaged face turned him sick. It -was like the reedy, piping music, woven out of the very heart of evil. - -Yet her eyes were shrewd, and he knew that she had not missed his -searching look around the room, nor his interest in Freka. There was a -note of warning in her voice. - -He did not want trouble, yet. Not until he found some hint of the trap -Fianna had told him of. - -He said, "Bring me wine." - -"Will you try the lamp of Going-back, Outlander? It brings much joy." - -"Perhaps later. Now, I wish wine." - - * * * * * - -She went away, clapping her hands for a slatternly wench who came -between the sprawled figures with an earthen mug. Stark sat down beside -a table, where his back was to the wall and he could see both the door -and the whole room. - -Kala had returned to her own heap of furs by the door, but her basilisk -eyes were alert. - -Stark made a pretence of drinking, but his mind was very busy, very -cold. - -Perhaps this, in itself, was the trap. Freka was temporarily a beast. -He would fight, and Kala would shriek, and the other dull-eyed brutes -would rise and fight also. - -But he would have needed no warning about that--and Delgaun himself had -said there would be trouble. - -No. There was something more. - -He let his gaze wander over the room. It was large, and there were -other rooms off of it, the openings hung with ragged curtains. Through -the rents, Stark could see others of Kala's customers sprawled under -Shanga-lamps, and some of these had gone so far back from humanity that -they were hideous to behold. But still there was no sign of danger to -himself. - -There was only one odd thing. The room nearest to where Freka sat was -empty, and its curtains were only partly drawn. - -Stark began to brood on the emptiness of that room. - -He beckoned Kala to him. "I will try the lamp," he said. "But I wish -privacy. Have it brought to that room, there." - -Kala said, "That room is taken." - -"But I see no one!" - -"It is taken, it is paid for, and no one may enter. I will have your -lamp brought here." - -"No," said Stark. "The hell with it. I'm going." - -He flung down a coin and went out. Moving swiftly outside, he placed -his eye to a crack in the nearest shutter, and waited. - -Luhar of Venus came out of the empty room. His face was worried, and -Stark smiled. He went back and stood flat against the wall beside the -door. - -In a moment it opened and the Venusian came out, drawing his gun as he -did so. - -Stark jumped him. - -Luhar let out one angry cry. His gun went off a vicious streak of flame -across the moonlight, and then Stark's great hand crushed the bones -of his wrist together so that he dropped it clashing on the stones. -He whirled around, raking Stark's face with his nails as he clawed -for the Earthman's eyes, and Stark hit him. Luhar fell, rolling over, -and before he could scramble up again Stark had picked up the gun and -thrown it away into the ruins across the street. - -Luhar came up from the pavement in one catlike spring. Stark fell with -him, back through Kala's door, and they rolled together among the foul -furs and cushions. Luhar was built of spring steel, with no softness in -him anywhere, and his long fingers were locked around Stark's throat. - -Kala screamed with fury. She caught a whip from among her cushions--a -traditional weapon along the Low-Canals--and began to lash the two men -impartially, her hair flying in tangled locks across her face. The -bestial figures under the lamps shambled to their feet, and growled. - -The long lash ripped Stark's shirt and the flesh of his back beneath -it. He snarled and staggered to his feet, with Luhar still clinging to -the death grip on his throat. He pushed Luhar's face away from him with -both hands and threw himself forward, over a table, so that Luhar was -crushed beneath him. - -The Venusian's breath left him with a whistling grunt. His fingers -relaxed. Stark struck his hands away. He rose and bent over Luhar and -picked him up, gripping him cruelly so that he turned white with the -pain, and raised him high and flung him bodily into the growling, -beast-faced men who were shambling toward him. - -Kala leaped at Stark, cursing, striking him with the coiling lash. -He turned. The thin veneer of civilization was gone from Stark now, -erased in a second by the first hint of battle. His eyes blazed with -a cold light. He took the whip out of Kala's hand and laid his palm -across her evil face, and she fell and lay still. - -He faced the ring of bestial, Shanga-sodden men who walled him off from -what he had been sent to do. There was a reddish tinge to his vision, -partly blood, partly sheer rage. He could see Freka standing erect in -the corner, his head weaving from side to side brutishly. - -Stark raised the whip and strode into the ring of men who were no -longer quite men. - - * * * * * - -Hands struck and clawed him. Bodies reeled and fell away. Blank eyes -glittered, and red mouths squealed, and there was a mingling of snarls -and bestial laughter in his ears. The blood-lust had spread to these -creatures now. They swarmed upon Stark and bore him down with the -weight of their writhing bodies. - -They bit him and savaged him in a blind way, and he fought his way up -again, shaking them off with his great shoulders, trampling them under -his boots. The lash hissed and sang, and the smell of blood rose on the -choking air. - -Freka's dazed, brutish face swam before Stark. The Martian growled and -flung himself forward. Stark swung the loaded butt of the whip. It -cracked solidly on the Shunni's temple, and he sagged into Stark's arms. - -Out of the corner of his eyes, Stark saw Luhar. He had risen and crept -around the edge of the fight. He was behind Stark now, and there was a -knife in his hand. - -Hampered by Freka's weight, Stark could not leap aside. As Luhar rushed -in, he crouched and went backward, his head and shoulders taking the -Venusian low in the belly. He felt the hot kiss of the blade in his -flesh, but the wound was glancing, and before Luhar could strike again, -Stark twisted like a great cat and struck down. Luhar's skull rang on -the flagging. The Earthman's fist rose and fell twice. After that, -Luhar did not move. - -Stark got to his feet. He stood with his knees bent and his shoulders -flexed, looking from side to side, and the sound that came out of his -throat was one of pure savagery. - -He moved forward a step or two, half naked, bleeding, towering like a -dark colossus over the lean Martians, and the brutish throng gave back -from him. They had taken more mauling than they liked, and there was -something about the Outlander's simple desire to rend them apart that -penetrated even their Shanga-clouded minds. - -Kala sat up on the floor, and snarled, "Get out." - -Stark stood a moment or two longer, looking at them. Then he lifted -Freka to his feet and laid him over his shoulder like a sack of meal -and went out, moving neither fast nor slow, but in a straight line, and -way was made for him. - -He carried the Shunni down through the silent streets, and into the -twisting, crowded ways of Valkis. There, too, the people stared at him -and drew back, out of his path. He came to Delgaun's palace. The guards -closed in behind him, but they did not ask that he stop. - -Delgaun was in the council room, and Berild was still with him. It -seemed that they had been waiting, over their wine and their private -talk. Delgaun rose to his feet as Stark came in, so sharply that his -goblet fell and spilled a red pool of wine at his feet. - -Stark let the Shunni drop to the floor. - -"I have brought Freka," he said. "Luhar is still at Kala's." - -He looked into Delgaun's eyes, golden and cruel, the eyes of his dream. -It was hard not to kill. - -Suddenly the woman laughed, very clear and ringing, and her laughter -was all for Delgaun. - -"Well done, wild man," she said to Stark. "Kynon is lucky to have such -a captain. One word for the future, though--watch out for Freka. He -won't forgive you this." - -Stark said thickly, looking at Delgaun, "This hasn't been a night for -forgiveness." Then he added, "I can handle Freka." - -Berild said, "I like you, wild man." Her eyes dwelt on Stark's face, -curious, compelling. "Ride beside me when we go. I would know more -about you." - -And she smiled. - -A dark flush crept over Delgaun's face. In a voice tight with fury he -said, "Perhaps you've forgotten something, Berild. There is nothing for -you in this barbarian, this creature of an hour!" - -He would have said more in his anger, but Berild said sharply, - -"We will not speak of time. Go now, Stark. Be ready at midnight." - -Stark went. And as he went, his brow was furrowed deep by a strange -doubt. - - - VI - -At midnight, in the great square of the slave market, Kynon's caravan -formed again and went out of Valkis with thundering drums and skirling -pipes. Delgaun was there to see them go, and the cheering of the people -rang after them on the desert wind. - -Stark rode alone. He was in a brooding mood and wanted no company, -least of all that of the Lady Berild. She was beautiful, she was -dangerous, and she belonged to Kynon, or to Delgaun, or perhaps to both -of them. In Stark's experience, women like that were sudden death, and -he wanted no part of her. At any rate, not yet. - -Luhar rode ahead with Kynon. He had come dragging into the square at -the mounting, his face battered and swollen, an ugly look is his eyes. -Kynon gave one quick look from him to Stark, who had his own scars, and -said harshly, - -"Delgaun tells me there's a blood feud between you two. I want no more -of it, understand? After you're paid off you can kill each other and -welcome, but not until then. Is that clear?" - -Stark nodded, keeping his mouth shut. Luhar muttered assent, and they -had not looked at each other since. - -Freka rode in his customary place by Kynon, which put him near to -Luhar. It seemed to Stark that their beasts swung close together more -often than was necessary from the roughness of the track. - -The big barbarian captain sat rigidly erect in his saddle, but Stark -had seen his face in the torchlight, sick and sweating, with the brute -look still clouding his eyes. There was a purple mark on his temple, -but Stark was quite sure that Berild had spoken the truth--Freka would -not forgive him either the indignity or the hangover of his unfinished -wallow under the lamps of Shanga. - -The dead sea bottom widened away under the black sky. As they left the -lights of Valkis behind, winding their way over the sand and the ribs -of coral, dropping lower with every mile into the vast basin, it was -hard to believe that there could be life anywhere on a world that could -produce such cosmic desolation. - -The little moons fled away, trailing their eerie shadows over rock -formations tortured into impossible shapes by wind and water, peering -into clefts that seemed to have no bottom, turning the sand white as -bone. The iron stars blazed, so close that the wind seemed edged with -their frosty light. And in all that endless space nothing moved, and -the silence was so deep that the coughing howl of a sand-cat far away -to the east made Stark jump with its loudness. - -Yet Stark was not oppressed by the wilderness. Born and bred to the -wild and barren places, this desert was more kin to him than the cities -of men. - -After a while there was a jangling of brazen bangles behind him and -Fianna came up. He smiled at her, and she said rather sullenly, - -"The Lady Berild sent me, to remind you of her wish." - -Stark glanced to where the scarlet-curtained litter rocked along, and -his eyes glinted. - -"She's not one to let go of a thing, is she?" - -"No." Fianna saw that no one was within earshot, and then said quietly, -"Was it as I said, at Kala's?" - -Stark nodded. "I think, little one, that I owe you my life. Luhar would -have killed me as soon as I tackled Freka." - -He reached over and touched her hand where it lay on the bridle. She -smiled, a young girl's smile that seemed very sweet in the moonlight, -honest and comradely. - -It was odd to be talking of death with a pretty girl in the moonlight. - -Stark said, "Why does Delgaun want to kill me?" - -"He gave no reason, when he spoke to the man from Venus. But perhaps -I can guess. He knows that you're as strong as he is, and so he fears -you. Also, the Lady Berild looked at you in a certain way." - -"I thought Berild was Kynon's woman." - -"Perhaps she is--for the time," answered Fianna enigmatically. Then -she shook her head, glancing around with what was almost fear. "I have -risked much already. Please--don't let it be known that I've spoken to -you, beyond what I was sent to say." - -Her eyes pleaded with him, and Stark realized with a shock that Fianna, -too, stood on the edge of a quicksand. - -"Don't be afraid," he said, and meant it. "We'd better go." - -She swung her beast around, and as she did so she whispered, "Be -careful, Eric John Stark!" - -Stark nodded. He rode behind her, thinking that he liked the sound of -his name on her lips. - - * * * * * - -The Lady Berild lay among her furs and cushions, and even then there -was no indolence about her. She was relaxed as a cat is, perfectly at -ease and yet vibrant with life. In the shadows of the litter her skin -showed silver-white and her loosened hair was a sweet darkness. - -"Are you stubborn, wild man?" she asked. "Or do you find me -distasteful?" - -He had not realized before how rich and soft her voice was. He looked -down at the magnificent supple length of her, and said, - -"I find you most damnably attractive--and that's why I'm stubborn." - -"Afraid?" - -"I'm taking Kynon's pay. Should I take his woman also?" - -She laughed, half scornfully. "Kynon's ambitions leave no room for me. -We have an agreement, because a king must have a queen--and he finds my -counsel useful. You see, I am ambitious, too! Apart from that, there is -nothing." - -Stark looked at her, trying to read her smoke-grey eyes in the gloom. -"And Delgaun?" - -"He wants me, but...." She hesitated, and then went on, in a tone -quite different from before, her voice low and throbbing with a secret -pleasure as vast and elemental as the star-shot sky. - -"I belong to no one," she said. "I am my own." - -Stark knew that for the moment she had forgotten him. - -He rode for a time in silence, and then he said slowly, repeating -Delgaun's words, - -"Perhaps you have forgotten something, Berild. There is nothing for you -in me, the creature of an hour." - -He saw her start, and for a moment her eyes blazed and her breath was -sharply drawn. Then she laughed, and said, - -"The wild man is also a parrot. And an hour can be a long time--as long -as eternity, if one wills it so." - -"Yes," said Stark, "I have often thought so, waiting for death to come -at me out of a crevice in the rocks. The great lizard stings, and his -bite is fatal." - -He leaned over in the saddle, his shoulders looming above hers, naked -in the biting wind. - -"My hours with women are short ones," he said. "They come after the -battle, when there is time for such things. Perhaps then I'll come and -see you." - -He spurred away and left her without a backward look, and the skin of -his back tingled with the expectancy of a flying knife. But the only -thing that followed him was a disturbing echo of laughter down the wind. - -Dawn came. Kynon beckoned Stark to his side, and pointed out at the -cruel waste of sand, with here and there a reef of basalt black against -the burning white. - -"This is the country you will lead your men over. Learn it." He was -speaking to Luhar as well. "Learn every water hole, every vantage -point, every trail that leads toward the Border. There are no -better fighters than the Dryland men when they're well led, and you -must prove to them that you can lead. You'll work with their own -chieftains--Freka, and the others you'll meet when we reach Sinharat." - -Luhar said, "Sinharat?" - -"My headquarters. It's about seven days' march--an island city, old as -the moons. The Rama cult was strong there, legend has it, and it's a -sort of holy place to the tribesmen. That's why I picked it." - -He took a deep breath and smiled, looking out over the dead sea bottom -toward the Border, and his eyes held the same pitiless light as the sun -that baked the desert. - -"Very soon, now," he said, more to himself than the others. "Only a -handful of days before we drown the Border states in their own blood. -And after that...." - -He laughed, very softly, and said no more. Stark could believe that -what Berild said of him was true. There was a flame of ambition in -Kynon that would let nothing stand in its way. - -He measured the size and the strength of the tall barbarian, the eagle -look of his face and the iron that lay beneath his joviality. Then -Stark, too, stared off toward the Border and wondered if he would ever -see Tarak or hear Simon Ashton's voice again. - -For three days they marched without incident. At noon they made a dry -camp and slept away the blazing hours, and then went on again under -a darkening sky, a long line of tall men and rangy beasts, with the -scarlet litter blooming like a strange flower in the midst of it. -Jingling bridles and dust, and padded hoofs trampling the bones of the -sea, toward the island city of Sinharat. - -Stark did not speak again to Berild, nor did she send for him. Fianna -would pass him in the camp, and smile sidelong, and go on. For her -sake, he did not stop her. - -Neither Luhar nor Freka came near him. They avoided him pointedly, -except when Kynon called them all together to discuss some point of -strategy. But the two seemed to have become friends, and drank together -from the same bottle of wine. - -Stark slept always beside his mount, his back guarded and his gun -loose. The hard lessons learned in his childhood had stayed with him, -and if there was a footfall near him in the dust he woke often before -the beast did. - - * * * * * - -Toward morning of the fourth night the wind, that never seemed to -falter from its steady blowing, began to drop. At dawn it was dead -still, and the rising sun had a tinge of blood. The dust rose under the -feet of the beasts and fell again where it had risen. - -Stark began to sniff the air. More and more often he looked toward the -north, where there was a long slope as flat as his palm that stretched -away farther than he could see. - -A restless unease grew within him. Presently he spurred ahead to join -Kynon. - -"There is a storm coming," he said, and turned his head northward again. - -Kynon looked at him curiously. - -"You even have the right direction," he said. "One might think you were -a native." He, too, gazed with brooding anger at the long sweep of -emptiness. - -"I wish we were closer to the city. But one place is as bad as another -when the khamsin blows, and the only thing to do is keep moving. You're -a dead dog if you stop--dead and buried." - -He swore, with a curious admixture of blunt Anglo-Saxon in his Martian -profanity, as though the storm were a personal enemy. - -"Pass the word along to force it--dump whatever they have to to lighten -the loads. And get Berild out of that damned litter. Stick by her, will -you, Stark? I've got to stay here, at the head of the line. And don't -get separated. Above all, _don't get separated_!" - -Stark nodded and dropped back. He got Berild mounted, and they left the -litter there, a bright patch of crimson on the sand, its curtains limp -in the utter stillness. - -Nobody talked much. The beasts were urged on to the top of their speed. -They were nervous and fidgety, inclined to break out of line and run -for it. The sun rose higher. - -One hour. - -The windless air shimmered. The silence lay upon the caravan with a -crushing hand. Stark went up and down the line, lending a hand to the -sweating drovers with the pack animals that now carried only water -skins and a bare supply of food. Fianna rode close beside Berild. - -Two hours. - -For the first time that day there was a sound in the desert. - -It came from far off, a moaning wail like the cry of a giantess in -travail. It rushed closer, rising as it did so to a dry and bitter -shriek that filled the whole sky, shook it, and tore it open, letting -in all the winds of hell. - -It struck swiftly. One moment the air was clear and motionless. The -next, it was blind with dust and screaming as it fled, tearing with -demoniac fury at everything in its path. - -Stark spurred toward the women, who were only a few feet away but -already hidden by the veil of mingled dust and sand. - -Someone blundered into him in the murk. Long hair whipped across his -face and he reached out, crying "Fianna! Fianna!" A woman's hand caught -his, and a voice answered, but he could not hear the words. - -Then, suddenly, his beast was crowded by other scaly bodies. The -woman's grip had broken. Hard masculine hands clawed at him. He could -make out, dimly, the features of two men, close to his. - -Luhar, and Freka. - -His beast gave a great lurch, and sprang forward. Stark was dragged -from the saddle, to fall backward into the raging sand. - - - VII - -He lay half-stunned for a moment, his breath knocked out of him. There -was a terrible reptilian screaming sounding thin through the roar of -the wind. Vague shapes bolted past him, and twice he was nearly crushed -by their trampling hoofs. - -Luhar and Freka must have waited their chance. It was so beautifully -easy. Leave Stark alone and afoot, and the storm and the desert between -them would do the work, with no blame attaching to any man. - -Stark got to his feet, and a human body struck him at the knees so that -he went down again. He grappled with it, snarling, before he realized -that the flesh between his hands was soft and draped in silken cloth. -Then he saw that he was holding Berild. - -"It was I," she gasped, "and not Fianna." - -Her words reached him very faintly, though he knew she was yelling at -the top of her lungs. She must have been knocked from her own mount -when Luhar thrust between them. - -Gripping her tightly, so that she should not be blown away, Stark -struggled up again. With all his strength, it was almost impossible to -stand. - -Blinded, deafened, half strangled, he fought his way forward a few -paces, and suddenly one of the pack beasts loomed shadow-like beside -him, going by with a rush and a squeal. - -By the grace of Providence and his own swift reflexes, he caught its -pack lashings, clinging with the tenacity of a man determined not to -die. It floundered about, dragging them, until Berild managed to grasp -its trailing halter rope. Between them, they fought the creature down. - -Stark clung to its head while the woman clambered to its back, twisting -her arm through the straps of the pad. A silken scarf whipped toward -him. He took it and tied it over the head of the beast so it could -breathe, and after that it was quieter. - -There was no direction, no sight of anything, in that howling inferno. -The caravan seemed to have been scattered like a drift of autumn -leaves. Already, in the few brief moments he had stood still, Stark's -legs were buried to the knees in a substratum of sand that rolled -like water. He pulled himself free and started on, going nowhere, -remembering Kynon's words. - -Berild ripped her thin robe apart and gave him another strip of silk -for himself. He bound it over his nose and eyes, and some of the -choking and the blindness abated. - -Stumbling, staggering, beaten by the wind as a child is beaten by a -strong man, Stark went on, hoping desperately to find the main body of -the caravan, and knowing somehow that the hope was futile. - -The hours that followed were nightmare. He shut his mind to them, in a -way that a civilized man would have found impossible. In his childhood -there had been days, and nights, and the problems had been simple -ones--how to survive one span of light that one might then struggle to -survive the span of darkness that came after. One thing, one danger, at -a time. - -Now there was a single necessity. Keep moving. Forget tomorrow, or what -happened to the caravan, or where the little Fianna with her bright -eyes may be. Forget thirst, and the pain of breathing, and the fiery -lash of sand on naked skin. Only don't stand still. - -It was growing dark when the beast fell against a half-buried boulder -and snapped its foreleg. Stark gave it a quick and merciful death. They -took the straps from the pad and linked themselves together. Each took -as much food as he could carry, and Stark shouldered the single skin of -water that fortune had vouchsafed them. - -They staggered on, and Berild did not whimper. - -Night came, and still the khamsin blew. Stark wondered at the woman's -strength, for he had to help her only when she fell. He had lost all -feeling himself. His body was merely a thing that continued to move -only because it had been ordered not to stop. - -The haze in his own mind had grown as thick as the black obscurity of -the night. Berild had ridden all day, but he had walked, and there was -an end even to his strength. He was approaching it now, and was too -weary even to be afraid. - -He became aware at some indeterminate time that Berild had fallen and -was dragging her weight against the straps. He turned blindly to help -her up. She was saying something, crying his name, striking at him so -that he should hear her words and understand. - -At last he did. He pulled the wrappings from his face and breathed -clean air. The wind had fallen. The sky was growing clear. - -He dropped in his tracks and slept, with the exhausted woman half dead -beside him. - - * * * * * - -Thirst brought them both awake in the early dawn. They drank from the -skin, and then sat for a time looking at the desert, and at each other, -thinking of what lay ahead. - -"Do you know where we are?" Stark asked. - -"Not exactly." Berild's face was shadowed with weariness. It had -changed, and somehow, to Stark, it had grown more beautiful, because -there was no weakness in it. - -She thought a minute, looking at the sun. "The wind blew from the -north," she said. "Therefore we have come south from the track. -Sinharat lies that way, across the waste they call the Belly of -Stones." She pointed to the north and east. - -"How far?" - -"Seven, eight days, afoot." - -Stark measured their supply of water and shook his head. "It'll be dry -walking." - -He rose and took up the skin, and Berild came beside him without a -word. Her red hair hung loose over her shoulders. The rags of her -silken robe had been torn away by the wind, leaving her only the loose -skirt of the desert women, and her belt and collar of jewels. - -She walked erect with a steady, swinging stride, and it was almost -impossible for Stark to remember her as she had been, riding like a -lazy queen in her scarlet litter. - -There was no way to shelter themselves from the midday sun. The sun of -Mars at its worst, however, was only a pale candle beside the sun of -Mercury, and it did not bother Stark. He made Berild lie in the shadow -of his own body, and he watched her face, relaxed and unfamiliar in -sleep. - -For the first time, then, he was conscious of a strangeness in her. -He had seen so little of her before, in Valkis, and almost nothing on -the trail. Now, there was little of her mind or heart that she could -conceal from him. - -Or was there? There were moments, while she slept, when the shadows of -strange dreams crossed her face. Sometimes, in the unguarded moment of -waking, he would see in her eyes a look he could not read, and his -primitive senses quivered with a vague ripple of warning. - -Yet all through those blazing days and frosty nights, tortured with -thirst and weary to exhaustion, Berild was magnificent. Her white skin -was darkened by the sun and her hair became a wild red mane, but she -smiled and set her feet resolutely by his, and Stark thought she was -the most beautiful creature he had ever seen. - -On the fourth day they climbed a scarp of limestone worn in ages past -by the sea, and looked out over the place called the Belly of Stones. - -The sea bottom curved downward below them into a sort of gigantic -basin, the farther rim of which was lost in shimmering waves of heat. -Stark thought that never, even on Mercury, had he seen a place more -cruel and utterly forsaken of gods or men. - -It seemed as though some primal glacier must have met its death here -in the dim dawn of Mars, hollowing out its own grave. The body of the -glacier had melted away, but its bones were left. - -Bones of basalt, of granite and marble and porphyry, of every -conceivable color and shape and size, picked up by the ice as it -marched southward from the pole and dropped here as a cairn to mark its -passing. - -The Belly of Stones. Stark thought that its other name was Death.... - -For the first time, Berild faltered. She sat down and bent her head -over her hands. - -"I am tired," she said. "Also, I am afraid." - -Stark asked, "Has it ever been crossed?" - -"Once. But they were a war party, mounted and well supplied." - -Stark looked out across the stones. "We will cross it," he said. - -Berild raised her head. "Somehow I believe you." She rose slowly and -put her hands on his breast, over the strong beating of his heart. - -"Give me your strength, wild man," she whispered. "I shall need it." - -He drew her to him and kissed her, and it was a strange and painful -kiss, for their lips were cracked and bleeding from their terrible -thirst. Then they went down together into the place called the Belly of -Stones. - - - VIII - -The desert had been a pleasant and kindly place. Stark looked back upon -it with longing. And yet this inferno of blazing rock was so like the -valleys of his boyhood that it did not occur to him to lie down and die. - -They rested for a time in the sheltered crevice under a great leaning -slab of blood-red stone, moistening their swollen tongues with a few -drops of stinking water from the skin. At nightfall they drank the last -of it, but Berild would not let him throw the skin away. - -Darkness, and a lunar silence. The chill air sucked the day's heat -out of the rocks and the iron frost came down, so that Stark and the -red-haired woman must keep moving or freeze. - -Stark's mind grew clouded. He spoke from time to time, in a croaking -whisper, dropping back into the harsh mother-tongue of the Twilight -Belt. It seemed to him that he was hunting, as he had so many times -before, in the waterless places--for the blood of the great lizard -would save him from thirst. - -But nothing lived in the Belly of Stones. Nothing, but the two who -crept and staggered across it under the low moons. - -Berild fell, and could not rise again. Stark crouched beside her. Her -face stared up at him, white in the moonlight, her eyes burning and -strange. - -"I will not die!" she whispered, not to him, but to the gods. "_I will -not die!_" - -And she clawed the sand and the bitter rocks, dragging herself onward. -It was uncanny, the madness that she had for life. - -Stark raised her up and carried her. His breath came in deep sobbing -gasps. After a while he, too, fell. He went on like a beast on all -fours, dragging the woman. - -He knew dimly that he was climbing. There was a glimmering of dawn in -the sky. His hands slipped on a lip of sand and he went rolling down -a smooth slope. At length he stopped and lay on his back like a dead -thing. - -The sun was high when consciousness returned to him. He saw Berild -lying near him and crawled to her, shaking her until her eyes opened. -Her hands moved feebly and her lips formed the same four words. _I will -not die._ - -Stark strained his eyes to the horizon, praying for a glimpse of -Sinharat, but there was nothing, only emptiness and sand. With great -difficulty he got the woman to her feet, supporting her. - -He tried to tell her that they must go on, but he could no longer form -the words. He could only gesture and urge her forward, in the direction -of the city. - -But she refused to go. "Too far ... die ... without water...." - -He knew that she was right, but still he was not ready to give up. - -She began to move away from him, toward the south, and he thought that -she had gone mad and was wandering. Then he saw that she was peering -with awful intensity at the line of the scarp that formed this wall -of the Belly of Stones. It rose into a great ridge, serrated like the -backbone of a whale, and some three miles away a long dorsal fin of -reddish rock curved out into the desert. - -Berild made a little sobbing noise in her throat. She began to plod -toward the distant promontory. - -Stark caught up with her. He tried to stop her, but she would not be -stopped, turning a feral glare upon him. - -She croaked, "Water!" and pointed. - -He was sure now that she was mad. He told her so, forcing the painful -words out of his throat, reminding her of Sinharat and that she was -going away from any possible help. - -She said again, quite sanely, "Too far. Two--three days without water." -She pointed. "Monastery--old well--a chance...." - -Stark decided that he had little to lose by trusting her. He nodded and -went with her toward the curve of rock. - -The three miles might have been three hundred. At last they came up -under the ragged cliffs--and there was nothing there but sand. - -Stark looked at the woman. A great rage and a deep sense of futility -came over him. They were indeed lost. - -But Berild had gone a few steps farther. With a hoarse cry, she bent -over what had seemed merely a slab of stone fallen from the cliff, and -Stark saw that it was a carven pillar, half buried. Now he was able to -make out the mounded shape of a ruin, of which only the foundations and -a few broken columns were left. - -For a long while Berild stood by the pillar, her eyes closed. Stark got -the uncanny feeling that she was visualizing the place as it had been, -though the wall must have been dust a thousand years ago. Presently she -moved. He followed her, and it was strange to see her, on the naked -sand, treading the arbitrary patterns of vanished corridors. - -She came to a halt, in a broad flat space that might once have been a -central courtyard. There she fell on her knees and began to dig. - -Stark got down beside her. They scrabbled like a pair of dogs in the -yielding sand. Stark's nails slipped across something hard, and there -was a yellow glint through the dusty ochre. Within a few minutes they -had bared a golden cover six feet across, very massive and wonderfully -carved with the symbols of some lost god of the sea. - -Stark struggled to lift the thing away. He could not move it. Then -Berild pressed a hidden spring and the cover slid back of itself. -Beneath it, sweet and cold, protected through all these ages, water -stirred gently against mossy stones. - - * * * * * - -An hour later, Stark and Berild lay sleeping, soaked to the skin, their -very hair dripping with the blessed dampness. - -That night, when the low moons roved over the desert, they sat by the -well, drowsy with an animal sense of rest and repletion. And Stark -looked at the woman and said, - -"I know you now." - -"What do you know, wild man?" - -Stark said quietly, "You are a Rama." - -She did not answer at once. Then she said, "I was bred in these -deserts. Is it so strange that I should know of this well?" - -"Strange that you didn't mention it before. You were afraid, weren't -you, that if you led me here your secret would come out? But it was -that, or die." - -He leaned forward, studying her. - -"If you had led me straight to the well, I might not have wondered. But -you had to stop and remember, how the halls were built and where the -doorways were that led to the inner court. You lived in this place when -it was whole. And no one, not even Kynon himself, knows of it but you." - -"You dream, wild man. The moon is in your eyes." - -Stark shook his head slowly. "I know." - -She laughed, and stretched her arms wide on the sand. - -"But I am young," she said. "And men have told me I am beautiful. It -is good to be young, for youth has nothing to do with ashes and empty -skulls." - -She touched his arm, and little darts of fire went through his flesh, -warm from his fingertips. - -"Forget your dreams, wild man. They're madness, gone with the morning." - -He looked down at her in the clear pale light, and she was young, and -beautifully made, and her lips were smiling. - -He bent his head. Her arms went round him. Her hair blew soft against -his cheek. Then, suddenly, she set her teeth cruelly into his lip. He -cried out and thrust her away, and she sat back on her heels, mocking -him. - -"That," she said, "is because you called Fianna's name instead of mine, -when the storm broke." - -Stark cursed her. There was a taste of blood in his mouth. He reached -out and caught her, and again she laughed, a peculiarly sweet, wicked -sound. - -The wind blew over them, sighing, and the desert was very still. - -For two days they remained among the ruins. At evening of the second -day Stark filled the water skin, and Berild replaced the golden cover -on the well. They began the last long march toward Sinharat. - - - IX - -Stark saw it rising against the morning sky--a city of gold and marble, -high on an island of rose-red coral laid bare by the vanished sea. -Sinharat, the Ever-Living. - -Yet it had died. As he came closer to it, plodding slowly through the -sand, he saw that the place was no more than a beautiful corpse, the -lovely towers broken, the roofless palaces open to the sky. Whatever -life Kynon and his armies might have foisted upon Sinharat was no more -than the fleeting passage of ants across the perfect bones of the dead. - -"What was it like before?" he asked, "with the blue water around it, -and the banners flying?" - -Berild turned a dark, calculating look upon him. - -"I told you before to forget that madness. If you talk it, no one will -believe you." - -"No one?" - -"You had best not anger me, wild man," she said quietly. "I may be your -only hope of life, before this is over." - -They did not speak again, going with slow weary steps toward the city. - -In the desert below the coral cliffs the armies of Kynon were encamped. -The tall warriors of Kesh and Shun waiting, with their women and their -beasts and their shining spears, for the pipers to cry them over -the Border. The skin tents and the long picket lines were too many -to count. In the distance, a convertible Kallman spacer that Stark -recognized as Knighton's made an ugly, jarring incongruity. - -Lookouts sighted the two toiling figures in the distance. Men and women -and children began to stream out across the sand, and presently a -great cheering arose. Where he had looked on emptiness for days, Stark -was smothered now by the press of thousands. Berild was picked up and -carried on the shoulders of two chiefs, and men would have carried -Stark also, but he fought them off. - -Broad flights of steps were cut in the coral. The throng flowed upward -along them. Ahead of them all went Eric John Stark, and he was smiling. -From time to time he asked a question, and men drew back from that -question, and his smile. - -Up the steps and into the streets of Sinharat he went, with a slow, -restless stride, asking, - -"Where is Luhar of Venus?" - -Every man there read death in his face, but they did not try to stop -him. - -People came out of the graceful ruins, drawn by the clamour, and the -tide rolled down the broad ways, the rose-red streets of coral, until -it spread out in the square before a great palace of gold and ivory and -white marble blinding in the sun. - -Luhar of Venus came down the terraced steps, fresh from sleep, his pale -hair tumbled, his eyes still drowsy. - -Others came through the door behind him. Stark did not see them. They -did not matter. Berild didn't matter, calling his name from where she -sat on the shoulders of the chiefs. Nothing, no one mattered, but -himself and Luhar. - -He crossed the square, not hurrying, a dark ravaged giant in rags. He -saw Luhar pause on the bottom step. He saw the sleep and the vagueness -go out of the Venusian's eyes as they rested first on the red-haired -woman, then on himself. He saw the fear come into them, and the undying -hate. - -Someone got between him and Luhar. Stark lifted the man and flung him -aside without breaking his stride, and went on. Luhar half turned. He -would have run away, back into the palace, but there were too many now -between him and the door. He crouched and drew his gun. - -Stark sprang. - -He came like a great black panther leaping, and he struck low. Luhar's -shot went over his back. After that there was no more shooting. There -was a moment, terribly short and silent, in which the two men lay -entangled, straining against each other in a sort of stasis. Then Luhar -screamed. - - * * * * * - -Stark knew dimly that there were hands, many of them, trying to drag -him away. He clung growling to the Venusian until he was torn loose by -main force. He struggled against his captors, and through a red haze he -saw Kynon's face, close to his and very angry. Luhar was not yet dead. - -"I warned you, Stark!" said Kynon furiously. "I warned you." - -Men were bending over Luhar. Knighton, Walsh, Themis, Arrod. Stark saw -that Delgaun was among them. He did not question at the time how word -had gone back to Valkis and sent Delgaun racing across the dead sea -bottom with his hired bravoes to search for the red-haired woman. It -was right that Delgaun should be there. - -In short ragged sentences, Stark told how Luhar and Freka had tried to -kill him, and how Berild had been lost with him. - -Kynon turned to the Venusian. Death was already glazing the cloud-grey -eyes, but it had not quenched the hatred and the venom. - -"He lies," whispered Luhar. "I saw him--he tried to run away and take -the woman with him." - -Luhar of Venus, taking vengeance with his last breath. - -Freka pushed forward, transparently eager to pick up his cue. "It is -so," he said. "I was with Luhar. I saw it also." - -Delgaun laughed. Cruel, silent laughter. He stood up, and looked at -Berild. - -Berild's eyes were blazing. She ignored Delgaun and spoke to Kynon. - -"You fool. Can't you see that they hate him? What Stark says is true. -And I would have died in the desert because of them, if Stark hadn't -been a better man than all of you." - -"Strange words," said Delgaun, "coming from a man's own mate. Perhaps -Luhar did lie, after all. Perhaps it was not Stark who tried to run -away, but you." - -She cursed him, with an ancient curse, and Kynon looked at her -sullenly. He said to the men who held Stark, "Chain him below, in the -dungeons." Then he took Berild's arm and went with her into the palace. - -Stark fought until someone behind him knocked him on the head with the -butt of a spear. The last thing he saw was the face of Fianna, standing -out from the crowd, wide-eyed with pity and love. - -He came to in a place of cold, dry stone. There was an iron collar -around his neck, and a five-foot chain ran from it to a ring in the -wall. The cell was small. A gate of iron bars closed the single -entrance. Beyond was an open well, with other cell doors around it, and -above were thick stone gratings open to the sky. He guessed that the -place was built beneath some inner court of the palace. - -There were no other prisoners. But there was a guard, a -thick-shouldered barbarian who sat on the execution block in the center -of the well, with a sword and a jug of wine. A guard who watched the -captive Stark smiled. - -Freka. - -When he saw that Stark was awake, Freka lifted up the jug and laughed. -"Here's to Death," he said. "For no one else comes here!" - -He drank, and after that he did not speak, only sat and smiled. - -Stark said nothing either. He waited, with the same unhuman patience he -had shown when he waited for his captors under the tor. - -The dim daylight faded from the gratings. Darkness came, and the pale -glimmer of the moons. Freka became a silvered statue of a man, sitting -on the block. Stark's eyes glowed. - -The empty jug dropped and broke. Freka rose. He took the naked sword in -his hand and crossed the open space to the cell. He lifted the outer -bar away. It fell with a great echoing clang, and Freka entered. - -"Stand up, Outlander," he said. "Stand up and face the steel. After -that you'll sleep in a coral pit, and not even the worms will find you." - -"Beast of Shanga!" Stark said contemptuously, and set his back against -the wall, to give himself all the slack of the chain. - -He saw the bright steel glimmer in the air, up and down again, but when -the blow fell he had leaped aside, and the point struck ringing against -the stone. Stark darted in to grapple. - -His fingers slipped on hard muscle, and Freka wrenched away. He was -a fighting man, and no weakling. The iron collar dug painfully into -the Earthman's throat and the heavy chain threw him backward. Freka -laughed, deep in his chest. The sword glinted hungrily. - - * * * * * - -Then, as though she had taken shape suddenly from the shadows, Fianna -was in the doorway. The little gun in her hand made a hissing spurt of -flame. Freka screamed once, and fell. He did not move again. - -"The swine," Fianna said, without emotion. "Delgaun ordered him to -wait, until it was sure that Kynon would not come down to talk to you. -Then the story was to be that you had escaped somehow, with Berild's -aid." - -She stepped over the body and unlocked the iron collar with a key she -took from her girdle. - -Stark took her slender shoulders gently between his hands. "Are you a -witch-girl, that you know all things and always come when I need you?" - -She gave him a deep, strange look. In the dusk, her proud young face -was unfamiliar, touched with something fey and sad. He wished that he -could see her eyes more clearly. - -"I know all things because I must," she told him wearily. "And I think -that you are my only hope--perhaps the only hope of Mars." - -He drew her to him, and kissed her, and stroked her dark head. "You're -too young to concern yourself with the destinies of worlds." - -He felt her tremble. "The youth of the body is only illusion, when the -mind is old." - -"And is yours old, little one?" - -"Old," she whispered. "As old as Berild's." - -He felt her tears warm against his skin, and she was like a child in -his arms. - -"Then you know about her," said Stark. - -"Yes." - -He paused. "And Delgaun?" - -"Delgaun also." - -"I thought so," Stark said. He nodded, scowling at the barred moonlight -in the well. "There are things I must know, myself--but we'd best get -out of here. Did Berild send you?" - -"Yes--as soon as she could get the key from Kynon. She is waiting for -you." She stirred Freka's body with her foot. "Bring that. We'll hide -it in the pit he meant for you." - -Stark heaved the body over his shoulder and followed the girl through -a twisting maze of corridors, some pitch dark, some feebly lighted by -the moons. Fianna moved as surely as though she were in the main square -at high noon. There was the silence of death in these cold tunnels, and -the dry faint smell of eternity. - -At length Fianna whispered. "Here. Be careful." - -She put out a hand to guide him, but Stark's eyes were like a cat's in -the dark. He made out a space where the rock with which the ancient -builders had faced these subterranean ways gave place to the original -coral. - -Ragged black mouths opened in the coral, entrances to some unguessed -catacombs beneath. Stark consigned Freka to the nearest pit, and then -reluctantly threw his sword in after him. - -"You won't need it," Fianna told him, "and besides, it would be -recognized. This will be a bitter night enough, without rousing the men -of Shun over Freka's death." - -Stark listened to the distant sliding echoes from the pit, and -shivered. He had so nearly finished there himself. He was glad to -follow Fianna away from that place of darkness and silent death. - -He stopped her in a place where a bar of moonlight came splashing -through a great crack in the tunnel roof. - -"Now," he said, "we will talk." - -She nodded. "Yes. The time has come for that." - -"There are lies everywhere," said Stark. "I am tangled up in lies. You -know the truth that is behind this war of Kynon's. Tell me." - -"Kynon's truth is simple," she answered, speaking slowly, choosing her -words. "He wants land and power, conquest. He will pour out the blood -of his people for that, and after that he plans to use the men of the -Low-Canals under Delgaun to keep the tribesmen in line. It may be -true, as he said, that they would be satisfied with grazing land and -water--but they would lose their freedom, and their pride, and I think -he has judged them wrongly. I think they would revolt." - -She looked up at Stark. "He planned to use your knowledge, and then -destroy you if you became troublesome." - -"I guessed that. What about the others?" - -"The outlanders? Use them, keep them as subordinates, or pay them off. -Kill them, if necessary." - -"Now," said Stark. "What of Delgaun and Berild?" - -Fianna said softly, "Their truth, too, is simple. They took Kynon's -idea of empire, and stretched it further. It was Delgaun's idea to -bring the strangers in. They would use Kynon and the tribes until -the victory was won. Then they would do away with Kynon and rule -themselves--with the outlanders and their ships and their powerful -weapons to oppress Low-Canaller and Drylander alike. - -"That way, they could rape a world. More outland vultures would come, -drawn by the smell of loot. The Martian men would fight as long as -there was the hope of plunder--after that, they would be slaves to -hold the empire. Their masters would grow fat on tribute from the -City-States and from the men of Earth who have built here, or who wish -to build. An evil plan--but profitable." - -Stark thought about Knighton and Walsh of Terra, Themis of Mercury, -Arrod of Callisto Colony. He thought of others like them, and what they -would do, with their talons hooked in the heart of Mars. He thought of -Delgaun's yellow eyes. - -He thought of Berild, and he was sick with loathing. - -Fianna came close to him, speaking in a different tone that had care -and anxiety only for him. - -"I have told you this, because I know what Berild plans. Tonight--oh, -tonight is a black and evil time, and death waits in Sinharat! It is -very close to me, I know. And you must follow your own heart, Eric John -Stark. I cannot tell you more." - -He kissed her again, because she was sweet and very brave. Then she led -him on through the dark labyrinth, to where Berild was waiting, with -her dangerous beauty and all the evil of the ages in her soul. - - - X - -They came out of the darkness so suddenly that Stark blinked in the -unaccustomed light of torches set in great silver sconces on the walls. - -The floor had been artificially smoothed, but otherwise this crypt was -as the eroding action of the sea had shaped it out of the coral reef. -It was not large, and it was like a cavern in a fairy tale, walled and -roofed with the fantastic wreathing shapes of the rose-red coral. At -one end there was a golden coffer set with flaming jewels. - -Berild was there. Her wonderful hair was dressed and shining, and her -body was clothed all in white, her arms and shoulders warm bronze from -the kiss of the desert sun. - -Kynon was there, also. He stood motionless and silent, and he did not -so much as turn his head when Fianna and Stark came in. His eyes were -wide open and blank as a blind man's. - -"I have been waiting," said Berild, "and the time is short." - -She seemed angry and impatient, and Stark said, "Freka is dead. It was -necessary to hide his body." - -She nodded and turned to the girl. "Go now, Fianna." - -Fianna bent her head and went away. She did not look at Stark. It was -as though she had no interest in anything that happened. - -Stark looked at Kynon, who had not moved or spoken. - -"He is safe enough," said Berild, answering Stark's unspoken question. -"I drugged his wine so that his mind was opened to mine, and he is my -creature as long as I will it." - -Hypnosis, Stark thought. His nerves were beginning to do strange -things. He wished desperately that he were back in the cell facing -Freka's sword, which at least would deal with him openly and without -guile or subterfuge. - -Berild set her hands on Stark's shoulders, and smiled as she had done -that night by the ancient well. - -"I offer you three things tonight, wild man," she said. Her eyes -challenged him, and the scent of her hair was sweet and maddening. - -"Your life--and power--and myself." - -Stark let his hands slip lightly down from her shoulders to her waist. -"And how will you do this thing?" he asked. - -"Easily," she said, and laughed. She was very proud, and sure of her -strength, and glad to be alive. "Oh, very easily. You guessed the truth -about me--I am of the Twice-Born, the Ramas. I hold the secret of the -Sending-on of Minds, which this great ox Kynon pretended to have. I can -give you life now--and forever. Remember, wild man--forever!" - -He bent his dark face to hers, so that their lips touched, and -murmured, "Would I have you forever, Berild?" - -"Until you tire of me--or I of you." She kissed him, and then added -mockingly, "Delgaun has had me for a thousand years, and I am weary of -him. So very weary!" - -"A thousand years is a long time," said Stark, "and I am not Delgaun." - -"No. You're a beast, a savage, a most magnificent cold-eyed animal, and -that is why I love you." She touched the muscle of his breast, and then -his throat, and added, "It's a pity there will never be another body -like this one. We must keep it as long as we can." - -"What is your plan?" Stark asked her. - -"Simply this. I will place your mind in Kynon's body. You will _be_ -Kynon, with all his power. You will be able then to keep Delgaun in -check--later, you can destroy him, but not until after the battle is -won, for we need the men of Valkis and Jekkara. You can keep your own -body safe from him, and at the worst, if by some chance he should -succeed in slaying the man he believes to be you, _you_ will still be -alive." - -"And after the battle," said Stark softly. "What then, Berild?" - -"We will rule together." She held his palms against hers. "You have -strong hands, wild man. Would you not like to hold a world between -them--and me?" - -She looked up at him, her eyes suddenly shrewd and probing. "Or do you -still believe the nonsense you talked to Kynon, about the tribes?" - - * * * * * - -Stark smiled. "It's easy to have principles when there's no gain -involved. No. I am as my name says--a man without a tribe. I have no -loyalties. And if I had, would I remember them now?" - -He held her, as she had said, between his hands, and they were very -strong. - -But even then, Berild could warn him. - -"Keep faith with me, then! My wisdom is greater than yours, and I have -powers you don't dream of. What I give, I can take away." - -For answer, Stark silenced her mouth with his own. - -When she drew away, she said rather breathlessly, "Let us hurry. The -tribes are gathered, and Kynon was to have given the signal for war at -dawn. There is much I must teach you between now and then." - -She paused with her hand on the lid of the golden coffer. "This is a -secret place," she said quietly. "Since before the ocean died, it has -been secret. Not even Kynon knew of it. I think only Delgaun and I, the -last of the Twice-Born, knew--and now you." - -"What about Fianna?" - -Berild shrugged. "She is only my servant. To her, this is only a little -cavern where I keep my private wealth." - -She pressed a series of patterned bosses in intricate sequence, and -there was the sharp click of an opening lock. A shiver ran up along -Stark's spine. The beast in him longed to run, to be away from this -whole business that smelled of evil. But the man in him knelt at -Berild's wish, and waited, and did not flinch when the blank-eyed Kynon -came like a moving corpse beside him. - -Berild raised the golden lid. And there was a great silence. - -On the slave block of Valkis, Kynon had brought forth two crowns of -shining crystal, and a rod of flame. As glass is to diamond, as the -pallid moon to the light of the sun, were those things to the reality. - -In her two hands Berild held the ancient crowns of the Ramas, the -givers of life. Twin circlets of glorious fire, dimming the shallow -glare of the torches, putting a nimbus of light around the white-clad -woman so that she was like a goddess walking in a cloud of stars. -Stark's whole being contracted to a point of icy pain at the beauty and -the wonder and the terror of them. - -She set one crown on Kynon's head, and even the drugged automaton -shivered and sighed at its touch. - -Stark's mind veered away from the incredible thing that was about to -happen. It spoke words to him, hurried desperate words of sanity, about -the electrical patterns of the mind, and the sensitivity of crystals, -and conductors, and electro-magnetic impulses. But that was only the -top of his brain. At base it was still the brain of N'Chaka that -believed in gods and demons and all the sorceries of darkness. Only -pride kept him from cowering abjectly at Berild's feet. - -She stood above him, a creature of dreams in the unearthly light. She -smiled and whispered, "Do not fear,"--and she placed the second crown -upon his head. - -A strange, shuddering fire swept through him. It was as though some -chip of the primal heart of all creation had been set by an unguessed -magic into the cells of the crystal. The force that shaped the universe -and scattered forth the stars, and set the great suns to spinning. -There was something awesome about it, something almost holy. - -And yet he was afraid. Most shockingly afraid. - -His brain was set free, in some strange fashion. The walls of his skull -vanished. His mind floated in a dim vastness. It was like a tiny sun, -glowing, spinning, swelling.... - -Berild lifted a crystal rod from the coffer, a wand of sorcerous fire. -And now Stark's thoughts had lost all track of science. A cloud of -misty darkness flowed around him, thickened.... - -A great leaping flare of light, a distant echo of a cry that he did not -recognize as his own, and then.... - -Nothing. - - - XI - -He was lying on his face, his cheek pressed against the cool coral. He -opened his eyes, his mind groping for the shreds of some remembered -terror. He saw, vaguely at first and then with terrible clarity as his -vision became clear, a man lying close beside him. - -A tall man, very strongly built, with skin burned almost to blackness -by exposure. A man who looked at him with eyes that were startlingly -light in his dark face.... - -His own eyes. His own face. - -He cried out and struggled to his feet, trembling, staggering, and -his body felt strange to him. He looked down upon the strangeness of -another man's limbs, the alien shaping of flesh and sinew upon alien -bones. - -The face of the dark giant who lay upon the coral mocked him. It -watched, but did not see. The eyes were blank, empty, without soul or -intelligence. - -The mind of Eric John Stark fought, in its alien prison, for sanity. - -Berild's voice spoke to him. Her hand was on his shoulder--Kynon's -shoulder.... - -"All is well, wild man. Do not fear. Kynon's mind is in your body, -still sleeping at my command. And you are Kynon now." - -It was not an easy thing to accept, but he knew that it was so, and he -knew that he had wished it to be so. It was easier to be calm after he -turned his back on _the other_. - -Berild took him in her arms and held him until he had stopped -shuddering, oddly like a mother with a frightened child. Then she -kissed him, smiling, and said, - -"The first time is hard. I can remember--and that was very long ago." -She shook him gently. "Now come. We'll take your body to a place -of safety. And then I must tell you all of Kynon's plans for those -outside." - -She spoke to the thing that lay upon the coral, saying, "Get up," and -it rose obediently and followed where Berild led, to a tiny barred -niche in a side passage. It made no protest when it was left, locked -safely in. - -"Only I can give it back to you," said Berild softly. "Remember that." - -Stark said, "I will remember." - -He went with Berild to Kynon's quarters in the palace. He sat among -Kynon's possessions, clothed in Kynon's flesh, and learned how Kynon's -mind had planned to loose a red tide upon the peaceful cities of the -Border. - -Only a small part of his mind was attentive to this. The rest of it was -concerned with the redness of Berild's hair and the warmth of her lips, -and with the heady knowledge that it was possible to be alive and young -forever. - -Never to lose the pride of strength, never to know the dimming -sight and failing mind of age. To go on, like a child in an endless -playground, with no fear of tomorrow. - -It was nearly dawn. - -Berild rose. She had told him much, but not the things Fianna had told -him, of the secret treachery she had planned with Delgaun. She helped -Stark to clothe Kynon's body in the harness of war, with the longsword -and the shield and the shining spear. Then she set her lips to his so -that his borrowed heart threatened to choke him with its pounding, and -her eyes were wondrously bright and beautiful. - -"It is time," she whispered. - -She walked beside him, as he had seen her beside Kynon in Valkis, -stepping like a queen. - -They came out of the palace, onto the steps where Luhar had died. There -were beasts waiting, trapped for war, and an escort of tall chiefs, -with pipers and drummers and link-boys to light the way. - -Stark mounted Kynon's beast. It sensed the wrongness in him, hissing -and rearing, but he held it down, and imperiously raised his hand. - -Throbbing drums and skirling pipes, tossing flames where the link-boys -ran with the torches, a clash of metal and a cheer, and Kynon of Shun -rode down through the streets of Sinharat to the coral cliffs, with the -red-haired woman at his side. - -They were waiting. - - * * * * * - -The men of Kesh and the men of Shun were gathered below the cliffs, -waiting. Stark led the way, as Berild had told him to, onto a ledge of -coral above them. Delgaun was there, with the outlanders and a handful -of Valkisians. He looked tired and ill-tempered. Stark knew that he had -been busy for hours with last-minute preparations. - -The first pale rays of dawn broke across the desert. A vast ringing cry -went up from the gathered armies. After that there was silence, a taut -expectant hush. - -There was no fear in Stark now. He was past that. Fear was too small an -emotion for what was about to be. - -He saw Delgaun's golden eyes, hot with a cruel excitement. He saw -Berild's secret triumph in her smile. He looked down upon the warriors, -and let the magnificent voice of Kynon ring out across the soundless -air. - -"There will be no war," he said. "You have been betrayed." - -In the moment that was left to him, he confessed the lie of the Rama -crowns. And then Berild, who was behind him now, had moved like a -red-haired fury to drive her dagger into his heart. - -In his own body, Stark might have escaped the blow. But the reflexes of -Kynon were not as his. They were swift enough to postpone death--the -blade bit deep, but not where Berild had wished it. He turned and -caught her by the wrists, and said to Delgaun, - -"She has betrayed you, too. Freka lies in a coral pit--and I am not -Kynon." - -Berild tore away from him. She spurred her beast toward the Valkisian. -She would have broken past him, through the escort, and up the cliffs -to safety in the tunnels under Sinharat. But Delgaun was too quick. - -[Illustration: _She would have broken past him, but Delgaun was too -quick._] - -One hand caught in the masses of her hair. She was dragged screaming -from the saddle, and even then her screams were not of fear, but of -fury. She clawed at Delgaun, and he fell with her to the ground. - -The tall chieftains of the escort came forward, but they were dazed, -and confused by the anger that was rising in them. Delgaun's wiry body -arched. He flung the woman over the ledge, and what happened to her -after that Stark did not see, nor wish to see. - -He was shouting again to the barbarians, the tale of Delgaun's -treachery. - -Behind him on the ledge there was turmoil where Delgaun ran on foot -between the beasts, and the outlanders made their try for safety. Below -him in the desert, where there had been silence, a great deep muttering -was growing, like the first growling of a storm, and the ranks of -spears rippled like wheat before the wind. - -And Stark felt the slow running out of Kynon's blood inside him, where -Berild's dagger stood out from his back. - -They had headed Delgaun away from the path up the cliff. The two loose -mounts had been caught and held. They had tried to catch Delgaun, but -he was light and fast and slipped away from them. Now he broke back, -toward Kynon's great beast. - -Knock the dying man from the saddle, charge through the milling -chieftains, who were hampered by their own numbers in that narrow -space.... - -He leaped. And the arms of Kynon, driven by the will of Eric John -Stark, encircled him and held him and would not let him go. - -The two men crashed to the ledge. Stark let out one harsh cry of agony, -and then was still, his hands locked around the Valkisian's throat, his -eyes intent and strange. - -Men came up, and he gasped, "He is mine," and they let him be. - -Delgaun did not die easily. He managed to get his dagger out, and -gashed the other's side until the naked ribs showed through. But once -again Stark's mind was free in some dark immensity of its own. He was -living again the dream he had in Valkis, and this was the end of the -dream. N'Chaka had a grip at last on the demon with yellow eyes that -hungered for his life, and he would not let go. - -The yellow eyes widened. They blazed, and then they slowly dimmed until -the last flicker of life was gone. The strength went out of N'Chaka's -hands. He fell forward, over his prey. - -Below, on the sand, Berild lay, and her outspread hair was as red as -blood in the fiery dawn. - -The men of Kesh and the men of Shun flowed in a resistless tide up -over the coral cliffs. The chieftains and the pipers and the link-boys -joined them, hunting the outlanders and the wolves of Valkis through -the streets of Sinharat. - -Unnoticed, a dark-haired girl ran down the path to the ledge. She bent -over the body of Kynon, pressing her hand to its heart. Tears ran down -and mingled with the blood. - -A low, faint moan came from the man's lips. Weeping like a child, -Fianna drew a tiny vial from her girdle and poured three drops of pale -liquid on the unresponsive tongue. - - - XII - -He had come a long way. He had been down in the deep black valleys of -the Place of Darkness, and the iron frost was in his bones. He had -climbed the bitter mountains where no creature of the Twilight Belt -might go and live. - -There was light, now. He had been lost and wandering, but he had won -back to the light. His tribe, his people would be waiting for him. But -he knew that he would never see them. - -He remembered, then, with the old terrible loneliness, that they were -not truly his people. They had raised him, but they were not of his -blood. - -And he remembered also that they were dead, slain by the miners who had -needed all the water of the valley for themselves. Slain by the miners -who had taken N'Chaka and put him in a cage. - -With a start of terror, he thought he was again in that cage, with the -leering bearded faces peering in at him. But in the blinding dazzle of -light he could see no bars. - -There was only one face. The anxious, pitying face of a girl. - -Fianna. - -His brain began to clear. Memory returned bit by bit, the fragments -fitting themselves gradually into place. - -Kynon. Delgaun. Berild. Sinharat, the Ever-Living. - -He remembered now with perfect clarity that he was dying, and it -seemed a terrible thing to die in the body of another man. For the -first time, fully, he felt the separation from his own flesh. It seemed -a blasphemous thing, more terrible than death. - -Fianna was weeping. She stroked his hair, and whispered, "I am so glad. -I was afraid--afraid you would never wake." - -He was touched, because he knew that she loved him and would be sad. He -lifted his hand to touch her face, to comfort her. - -He saw the fingers of that hand, dark against her cheek. Dark.... - -His own fingers. His own hand. - -He was not on the ledge. He was back in the coral crypt beneath the -palace. The light that had dazzled his eyes was not the sun, but only -the flare of torches. - -He sat up, his heart pounding wildly. - -Kynon of Shun lay beside him on the coral. He was quite dead, his head -encircled by a crown of fire, his side open to the white bone where -Delgaun's blade had struck. - -The wound that Kynon himself had never felt. - -The golden coffer was open. The second crown lay near Fianna, with the -rod beside it. - -Stark looked at her, deep into her eyes. Very softly he said, "I would -not have dreamed it." - -"You will understand, now--many things," she said. "And I was glad of -my power today, because I could truly give you life!" - -She rose, and he saw that she was very tired. Her voice was dull, as -though it counted over old things that no longer mattered. - -"You see why I was afraid. If _they_ had ever suspected that I, too, -was of the Twice-Born ... Berild or Delgaun, each alone, I might have -destroyed, but I could not destroy both of them. And if I had, there -was still Kynon. You did what I could not, Eric John Stark." - -"Why were you against them, Fianna? How were you proof against the -poison that made them what they were?" - -She answered angrily, "Because I am weary of evil, of scheming for -power and shedding the blood of men as though they were sheep! I am no -better than Berild was. I, too, have lived a long time, and my hands -are not clean. But perhaps, by what you helped me do, I have made up a -little for my sins." - -She paused, her thoughts turned darkly inward, and it was strange to -see the shadow of age touching her sweet young face. Then she said, -very slowly, like an old, old woman speaking, - -"I am weary of living. No matter where I go, I am a stranger. You can -understand that, though not so well as I. There is an end to pleasure, -and after that only loneliness is left. - -"I have remembered that I was human once. That is why I set myself -against their plan of empire. After all these ages I have come round -full circle to the starting point, and things seem to me now as they -seemed then, before I was tempted by the Sending-on of Minds. - -"It is a wicked thing!" she cried suddenly. "Against nature and the -gods, and it has never brought anything but evil!" - -She caught up the rod and held it in her hands. - -"This is the last," she said. "Cities die, and nations perish, and -material things, even such as these, are destroyed. One by one the -Twice-Born have perished also, through accident or swift disease or -murder, as Berild would have slain Delgaun. Now only this, and I, are -left." - - * * * * * - -Quite suddenly, she flung the rod against the coral, and it broke in a -cloudy flame and a tinkling of crystal shards. Then, one by one, she -broke the crowns. - -She stood still for a long moment. Then she whispered, "Now only I am -left." - -Again there was silence, and Stark was shaken by the magnitude of the -thing that she had done. Her slim girl's body somehow took on the -stature of a goddess. - -After a while he went to her and said awkwardly, "I have not thanked -you, Fianna. You brought me here, you saved me...." - -"Kiss me once, then," she answered, and raised her lips to his. "For I -love you, Eric John Stark--and that is the pity of it. Because I am not -for you, nor for any man." - -He kissed her, very tenderly, and there was the bitter taste of tears -on her soft lips. - -"Now come," she whispered, and took his hand. - -She led him back through the labyrinth, into the palace, and then out -again into the streets of Sinharat. Stark saw that it was sunset, and -that the city was deserted. The tribes of Kesh and Shun had broken camp -and gone. - -There was a beast ready for him, supplied with food and water. Fianna -asked him where he wished to go, and pointed the way to Tarak. - -"And you?" he asked. "Where will you go, little one?" - -"I have not thought." She lifted her head, and the wind played with her -dark hair. She did not smile, and yet suddenly Stark knew that she was -happy. - -"I am free of a great burden," she whispered. "I shall stay here for a -while, and think, and after that I shall know what to do. But whatever -it is there will be no evil in it, and in the end I shall rest." - -He mounted, and she looked up at him, with a look that wrung his heart -although it was not sad. - -"Go now," she said, "and the gods go with you." - -"And with you." He bent and kissed her once again, and then rode away, -down to the coral cliffs. - -Far out on the desert he turned and looked back, once, at the white -towers of Sinharat rising against the larger moon. - - - - - -End of Project Gutenberg's Queen of the Martian Catacombs, by Leigh Brackett - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK QUEEN OF THE MARTIAN CATACOMBS *** - -***** This file should be named 63956.txt or 63956.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/6/3/9/5/63956/ - -Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online -Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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