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old and evil as Sinharat. Yet Kynon would be the conqueror, the ruler, and
he was no Rama. Was that why Berild had become Kynon's woman, to
influence his every move, plotting all the while with Delgaun?
He turned abruptly around, away from the window. The great, ancient
hall was now a well of utter darkness, and the wind that moaned and
whispered through it seemed cold with the cold of dead ages. A
detestation of the place seized Stark, and he went down the stairs and out
of the building, feeling all the way as though eyes watched him in the
blackness.
As he walked through the silent, moon-splashed streets of Sinharat,
Stark tried to think. He had to stop Kynon's plan of conquest was more
bound to do so, if age-old evil was behind it. Should he tell Kynon and the
others, about Delgaun and Berild?
They would laugh at him. He had no proof to show them, none in the
world.
But there must be some way. He&
Stark suddenly stopped walking, all his nerves alert. He listened,
turning his head this way and that.
There was no sound at all, but the wind and its whisperings. Nothing
moved in the shadow-blotched, moonlit streets of the dead city.
But Stark was not reassured. His senses had spoken and had told him
that someone, something, was stalking him.
He moved on, after a moment, heading toward the distant glow of light
that came from Kynon's palace in the great square. But after a dozen steps
he suddenly froze again.
This time, he heard it. A scutter and scuffle of feet, back down the
narrow street in the shadows.
Stark put his hand on his gun and his voice rang down the street.
"Come out!"
A stooping figure came out of the shadow, toward him. For a moment
he did not realize that this was the tall barbarian chieftain, Freka, for the
man was hunched, bent forward.
Then as Freka came across a bar of moonlight, Stark saw his face,
slack-jawed, grinning, inexpressibly repulsive. He knew then. Freka, the
addict of an ancient vice, was a long way into Shanga, and in his
animalism he cared not the least about the gun facing him. He cared only
about his brute hatred. "Go back," Stark said softly. "I'll kill you." But he
knew that he could not, that the threat was an empty one. If he killed
Freka, he would incur the death penalty himself.
With a flash of insight, Stark realized the neatness of the trap. Delgaun
had set it, without a doubt no one else would have brought Freka the
Shanga lamp. Whoever of the two killed the other, must himself die by
Kynon's decree. Delgaun could not lose.
Stark suddenly took to his heels and ran. He ran in the direction of the
distant torch-glow. If he could get that far, so that Kynon and the others
saw Freka pursuing and attacking him&
He did not get that far. Freka, half an animal, could run as fast as he,
and faster. With an animal-like sound, he caught up to Stark, and his long
arms went around Stark's head, and his teeth sank into the back of Stark's
neck.
Stark, feeling himself going down, dived to the pavement to help the
movement. The side of his head rang on the time-worn cobbles and he felt
half-stunned but he kept on rolling in a somersault that shook off the
thing on his back. It shook the gun out of his hand, also. He scrambled to
his feet.
Freka, mewing, reached from the street where he had fallen and his
long arms grabbed Stark's knees and pulled him down again.
A kind of horror possessed Stark. He had been called a half-beast, in his
lifetime, but the thing he fought was all beast.
The teeth were trying for his throat. Stark's hand grabbed the long hair
of the barbarian and snapped his head back. Still holding Freka's hair, he
banged his head onto the cobbles.
Freka still clawed and mewed, and a shivering conviction that this
creature was invulnerable came to Stark. He heard vague voices yelling
somewhere. In a kind of hysterical fury he banged Freka's head again and
again on the cobblestones.
The voice of Kynon roared close by, and Stark was hauled to his feet
and blinked his eyes at the tossing torches.
"He's murdered Freka give me a spear!" screamed a Shunni warrior.
Stark saw other tribesmen, all with fury on their faces, and saw also the
horrified face of Walsh, and then Kynon's head blotted out the others as
Kynon came close to him.
"I warned you, Stark!"
"The man was in Shanga, he was an animal set upon me!" gasped
Stark. "And I know who set him! Delgaun& "
The flat of Kynon's great hand cracked across his mouth and he reeled
backward. Hard hands held him when he would have struck back.
"Blood for Freka's blood!" the Shunni warrior was speeching to Kynon.
"Unless all the men of Shun see this man die, we do not march with you!"
"You will see it," Kynon said. "All will see it. And yours, brother, will be
the weapon that wipes out Freka's blood."
Stark, raging, roared to Kynon, "You idiot! Pretending to the Rama
knowledge, while all the time you're a puppet dangled by& "
A spear-haft hit Stark on the back of his head and he fell into blackness.
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 a
well, with other cell doors around it, and above were thick stone gratings.
He guessed that the place was built beneath some inner court of the
palace.
A torch lit the room. There were no other prisoners. But there was a
guard, a thick-shouldered barbarian who sat on what looked like an
execution block in the center of the well, with a sword and a jug of wine. It
was the Shunni warrior who had screamed for a spear, and he looked at
Stark, and smiled.
"You should not have slept so long, outlander," he said. "For you have
only three hours till morning. And when morning comes, you will die on
the great stair, where all the men of Shun can see."
He drank from the jug, and set it down, and smiled again.
"Death comes easily if the thrust is sure," he said.
"But if the thrust wobbles, death is very slow, and very painful. I think
yours will be slow."
Stark did not answer. He waited, with the same unhuman patience he
had shown when he waited for his captors under the tor.
The man on the block laughed, and raised the jug again.
Stark's eyes narrowed slightly. He saw the movement of a shadow, in
the darkness beyond the drinking man.
He thought he knew who it was that came to this place so stealthily.
Delgaun would make very sure that he never stood upon the great stair, to
shout mad accusations to the Drylanders before he died.
He thought that he had not even three hours, now.
XIII
THEN, AS THOUGH she had suddenly taken shape there, Fianna stood
in the shadows behind the Shunni. Her young face was very pale, but her
hand did not tremble as she brought up the little gun she held.
The gun coughed, and the Shunni warrior pitched forward and lay
without moving, while his sword rattled along the stone floor. The jug,
upset, sent out bright crawling loopings of red.
Fianna stepped over the body and unlocked the iron collar with a key
she took from her girdle.
Stark took her slender shoulders between his hands. "Listen, Fianna. It
could be your death if it becomes known that you have done this."
She gave him a deep, strange look. In the dusky light, her proud young
face was unfamiliar, touched with something fey and sad. He wished that
he could see her eyes more clearly.
"I think that the death of many things is close," she said. "Tonight is a
black and evil time in Sinharat, which has known so much of darkness and
evil. And I risked freeing you because I think 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 destiny of worlds." [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]