

Queen of the Martian Catacombs Engraved

by Lee Brackett

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2010 Lee Brackett

1

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 her heels into the scaly sides, the brute only turned its head and hissed at her. It stumbled on a few more paces into the lee of a sandhill, and there it stopped, crouching down in the dust.

The woman dismounted. The creature's eyes burned like green lamps in the light of the little moons, and she knew that it was no use trying to urge it on. She looked back, the way she 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 her.

She stood still, thinking what she should do next. Ahead, far ahead, was a low ridge, and beyond the ridge lay Valkis and safety, but she could never make it now. Off to her 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,' she thought. But here, by the Nine Hells, they'll have to work for it!'

She moved then, running toward the tor with a lightness and speed incredible in anything but an animal or a savage. She was of Earth stock, built tall, and more massive than she looked by reason of her leanness. The desert wind was bitter cold, but she did not seem to notice it, though she wore only a ragged shirt of Venusian spider silk, open to the waist. Her skin was almost as dark as her black hair, burned indelibly by years of exposure to some terrible sun. Her eyes were startlingly light in colour, reflecting back the pale glow of the moons.

With the practised ease of a lizard she slid in among the loose and treacherous rocks. Finding a vantage point, where her back was protected by the tor itself, she crouched down.

After that she did not move, except to draw her gun. There was something eerie about her utter stillness, a quality of patience as unhuman as the patience of the rock that sheltered her.

The four black shadows came closer, resolved themselves into mounted women.

They found the beast, where it lay panting, and stopped. The line of the woman's footprints, already blurred by the wind but still plain enough, showed where she 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 woman crouching under the tor saw the thing that took shape. It was a Banning shocker, and she knew that she was not going to fight her way out of this trap. Her pursuers were out of range of her own weapon. They would remain so. The Banning, with its powerful electric beam, would take her – dead or senseless, as they wished.

She thrust the useless gun back into her belt. She knew who these women were, and what they wanted with her. They were officers of the Earth Police Control, bringing her a gift – twenty years in the Luna cell-blocks.

Twenty years in the grey catacombs, buried in the silence and the eternal dark.

She recognised the inevitable. She was used to inevitables – hunger, pain, loneliness, the emptiness of dreams. She had accepted a lot of them in her time. Yet she made no move to surrender. She looked out at the desert and the night sky, and her eyes blazed, the desperate, strangely beautiful eyes of a creature very close to the roots of life, something less and more than woman. Her hands found a shard of rock and broke it.

The leader of the four women rode slowly toward the tor, her right arm raised.

Her voice carried clearly on the wind. 'Erica Joan Stark!' she called, and the dark woman tensed in the shadows.

The rider stopped. She 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 Woman-without-a-tribe, I call you!'

There was a long silence. The rider and her mount were motionless under the low moons, waiting.

Erica Joan Stark stepped slowly out from the pool of blackness under the tor.

'Who calls me N'Chaka?'

The rider relaxed somewhat. She answered in English, 'You know perfectly well who I am, Erica. May we meet in peace?' Stark shrugged. 'Of course.'

She walked on to meet the rider, who had dismounted, leaving her beast behind. She was a slight, wiry woman, this EP C officer, with the rawhide look of the frontiers still on her. Her hair was grizzled and her sun-blackened skin was deeply lined, but there was nothing in the least aged about her hard good-humoured face nor her remarkably keen dark eyes.

'It's been a long time, Erica,' she said.

Stark nodded. 'Sixteen years.' The two women 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.' She 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 women 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, Erica. 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.'

Her dark eyes met Stark's cold stare and held it.

'Remember who I am – Simone Ashton. Remember who came along when the miners in that valley on Mercury had a wild girl in a cage, and were going to finish her off like they had the tribe that raised her. Remember all the years after that, when I brought that girl up to be a civilised human being.'

Stark laughed, not without a certain humour. 'You should have left me in the cage. I was caught a little old for civilising.'

'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, Erica, unless you make me.' She 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 near broke my neck to catch you before you got there?' Ashton bent closer, her face very intent. 'Have you made any deal with Delgauna of Valkis? Did she send for you?'

'She sent for me, but there's no deal yet. I'm on the beach. Broke. I got a message from this Delgauna, whoever she is, that there was going to be a private war back in the Drylands, and she'd pay me to help fight it. After all, that's my business.'

Ashton shook her head.

'This isn't a private war, Erica. 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, Barakesh. No law-abiding Martian, let alone an Earthwoman, can last five minutes in them. And the back-blocks are absolutely verboten. So all we get is rumours.

'Fantastic rumours about a barbarian chief named Kynyn, 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 thateverybody thought was dead a thousand years ago. We know that Kynyn is tied up somehow with Delgauna, 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, Luthar the Venusian.'

Stark gave a slight start, and Ashton smiled briefly.

'Oh, yes,' she said. 'I heard about that.' Then she sobered. 'You can figure that set-up for yourself, Erica. The barbarians are going to go out and fight some kind of a holy war, to suit the entirely unholy purposes of women like Delgauna 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.'

She paused, then said flatly, 'I want you to go on to Valkis, Erica – but as my agent. I won't put it on the grounds that you'd be doing civilisation a service. You don't owe anything to civilisation, Lady knows. But you might save a lot of your own kind of people from getting slaughtered to say nothing of the border-womenstate Martians who'll be the first to get Kynyn's axe.

'Also, you could wipe that twenty-year hitch on Luna off the slate, maybe even work up a desire to make a woman of yourself, instead of a sort of tiger wandering from one kill to the next.' She 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 her heel. Then she 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, Erica. You get to know a woman pretty well when you know her from boyhood on up. Your word is enough.'

There was a silence, and then Stark held out her hand. 'All right, Simone – 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, Erica.'

She turned, and they walked back together to where the three women waited. Ashton nodded, and they began to dismantle the Banning. Neither they nor Ashton looked back, as they rode away.

Stark watched them go. She filled her lungs with the cold air, and stretched. Then she roused the beast out of the sand. It had rested, and was willing to carry her again as long as she did not press it. She set off again, across the desert.

The ridge grew as she approached it, looming into a low mountain chain much worn by the ages. A pass opened before her, twisting between the hills of barren rock.

She 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.

2

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 she 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 recognisable as a place of human habitation. Five harbours, 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 queens 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 her way slowly down the steep descent. There was something fascinating to her 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 marketplace, 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 civilisation she affected had not dulled them. Now it seemed to her that the wind had the echoes of voices in it, and the smell of spices and fresh-spilled blood.

She was not surprised when, in the last level above the living town, armed women came out of the shadows and stopped her.

They were lean, dark women, 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 civilised 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.

She gave her name. 'Delgauna sent for me.'

The leader of the Valkisians nodded her narrow head. 'You're expected.' Her sharp eyes had taken in every feature of the Earthwoman, and Stark knew that her description had been memorised 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, she 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 men came down from the flat roofs. Torchlight flared, gold and scarlet, lighting the wineshops, making blacker the shadows of the alley-mouths.

Stark left her 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 she left a caravan passed her, 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 men rode like kings.

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 her way through the streets, Stark got the peculiar flavour of the town, that she guessed could never be touched or changed by anything.

In a square, a boy 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 her bright kilt and jewelled girdle leaped out and danced with the boy, her teeth flashing as she whirled and postured. In the end she bore his off, laughing, his black hair hanging down her back.

Men looked at Stark. Men 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 peculiar 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 her life, but never one before that beat with such a pulse of evil, incredibly ancient, but strong and gay.

She 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. She gave her 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 her 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.

She was brought before Delgauna, the lord of Valkis, in the big central room that served as her headquarters.

Delgauna was lean and catlike, after the fashion of her race. Her black hair showed a stippling of silver, and the hard beauty of her face was strongly marked, the lined drawn deep and all the softness of youth long gone away. She wore a magnificent harness, and her eyes, under fine dark brows, were like drops of hot gold.

She looked up as the Earthwoman came in, one swift penetrating glance. Then she 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 woman.

But she nodded and came up to the council table, turning her attention to the others in the room. A handful of Martians – Low-Canallers, chiefs and fighting women 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 Luhara of Venus. Pirates, thieves, renegades, and each one an expert in her 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 Luhara that her attention centred. Bitter memory and hatred had come to savage life within her as soon as she saw the Venusian.

The woman was handsome. A cashiered officer of the crack Venusian Guards, very slim, very elegant, her pale hair cropped short and curling, her dark tunic fitting her like a second skin.

She said, 'The aborigine! I thought we had enough barbarians here without sending for more.'

Stark said nothing. She began to walk toward Luhara.

Luhara said sharply, 'There's no use in getting nasty, Stark. Past scores are past. We're on the same side now.'

The Earthwoman spoke, then, with a peculiar gentleness.

'We were on the same side once before. Against Terror-Venus Metals. Remember?'

'I remember very well!' Luhara 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 women hadn't come along, I'd be screaming there yet.'

'You sold us out,' Stark said. 'You had it coming.'

She continued to walk toward Luhara.

Delgauna spoke. She did not raise her voice, yet Stark felt the impact of her command.

'There will be no fighting here,' Delgauna said. 'You are both hired mercenaries, and while you take my pay you will forget your private quarrels. Do you understand?'

Luhara nodded and sat down, smiling out of the corner of her mouth at Stark, who stood looking with narrowed eyes at Delgauna.

She was still half blind with her anger against Luhara. Her hands ached for the kill. But even so, she recognised the power in Delgauna.

A sound shockingly akin to the growl of a beast echoed in her throat. Then, gradually, she relaxed. The woman Delgauna she would have challenged. But to do so would wreck the mission that she had promised to carry out here for Ashton.

She 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?' she demanded. Delgauna poured wine into a bronze goblet. 'Don't expect me to know,' she snapped. She shoved the flagon along the table toward Stark.

Stark helped herself. The wine was warm and sweet on her tongue. She 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 she did not ask.

Time went by.

Stark raised her head, listening. 'What's that?'

Their duller ears had heard nothing, but Delgauna rose and flung open the shutters of the window near her.

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 splendour. 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 queen.

Delgauna made a harsh sound in her throat. 'It's Kynyn, at last!' she said, and swung around from the window. Her 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 herself beside Delgauna 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, Kynyn of Shun came into Valkis.

3

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 hooves 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 herself.

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 Kynyn roared out until the stones of the city echoed with it.

A woman leaped from the back of her mount to the block, standing at its outer edge where all could see, her hands flung up. 'I greet you, my brothers!'

And the cheering went on.

Stark studied Kynyn, surprised that she was so young. She had expected a grey smooth prophet, and instead, here was a brawny-shouldered woman of war standing as tall as herself.

Kynyn's eyes were a bright, compelling blue, and her face was the face of a young eagle. Her voice had deep music in it – the kind of voice that can sway crowds to madness.

Stark looked from her to the rapt faces of the people – even the Valkisians had caught the mood – and thought that Kynyn was the most dangerous woman she had ever seen. This tawny-haired barbarian in her kilt of bronze-bossed leathers was already half a god.

Kynyn shouted to the captain of her warriors, 'Bring the captive and the old woman!' Then she turned again to the crowd,urging them to silence. When at last the square was still, her 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. Kynyn's women were lifting to the block a tottering ancient so bowed with years that she could barely stand, and a youth of Terran stock. The girl was in chains. The old woman's eyes burned, and she looked at the girl beside her with a terrible joy.

Stark settled down to watch. The litter with the curtains of crimson silk was now beside the block. A boy, a Valkisian, stood beside it, looking up. It seemed to Stark that his green eyes rested on Kynyn with a smouldering anger.

She glanced away from the serving boy, and saw that the curtains were partly open. A man lay on the cushions within. She could not see much of him, except that his hair was like dark flame and he was smiling, looking at the old woman and the naked girl. Then his glance, very dark in the shadows of the litter, shifted away and Stark followed it and saw Delgauna. Every muscle of Delgauna's body was drawn taut, and she seemed unable to look away from the man 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 woman reached out and touched the girl's smooth shoulder, and her gums showed bluish as she laughed.

Kynyn 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 woman'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.' She glanced down along her powerful frame, half-consciously flexing her 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 Kynyn, 'I am not a Rama. I am a woman like you. Like you, I have no wish to grow old, and in the end, to die.' She swung abruptly to the old woman.

'You, Grandfather! Would you not wish to be young again – to ride out to battle, to take the man of your choice?'

The old woman wailed, 'Yes! Yes!' and her gaze dwelt hungrily upon the girl.

'And you shall be!' The strength of a god rang in Kynyn's voice. She 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 women of Kesh and Shun are free from their ancient bondage of thirst and the women 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 Kynyn, '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 women, marched to the litter and took from the man's hands a bundle wrapped in silks. Bearing it as though it were precious beyond belief, she came to the block and lifted it up, and Kynyn took it from her.

The silken wrappings fluttered loose, fell away. And in Kynyn's hands gleamed two crystal crowns and a shining rod.

She held them high, the sunlight glancing in cold fire from she crystal.

Behold!' she 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. Kynyn turned. The old woman began to tremble. Kynyn placed one crown on her wrinkled scalp, and the tottering creature winced as though in pain, but her face was ecstatic.

Relentlessly, Kynyn crowned with the second circlet the head of the frightened girl.

'Kneel,' she said.

They knelt. Standing tall above them, Kynyn held the rod in her 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 woman and the youth were haloed with a chill, supernal fire.

The drumbeat ceased. The old woman cried out. Her hands plucked feebly at her head, then went to her breast and clenched there. Quite suddenly she fell forward over her knees. A convulsive tremor shook her. Then she lay still.

The girl swayed and then fell forward also, with a clashing of chains.

The light died out of the crowns. Kynyn stood a moment longer, rigid as a statue, holding the rod which still flickered with blue lightning. Then that also died.

Kynyn lowered the rod. In a ringing voice she cried, 'Arise, Grandfather!'

The girl stirred. Slowly, very slowly, she rose to her feet. Holding out her hands, she stared at them, and then touched her thighs, and her flat belly, and the deep curve of her bosom .

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 her.

With the perfect accent of the Drylands, the Earth girl 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 girl fell down and embraced Kynyn's knees.

Erica Joan Stark found that she herself was trembling slightly. The Valkisian wore a look of intense satisfaction under her mask of awe. The others were almost as rapt and open-mouthed as the crowd.

Stark turned her 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 boy beside it had not moved. Still he looked up at Kynyn, and there was nothing in his 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. Kynyn raised up the girl and struck off the chains of captivity. She mounted, with the girl beside her. Delgauna walked before her through the streets, and so did the outlanders.

The body of the old woman was disregarded, except by some of Kynyn's barbarians who wrapped it in a white cloth and took it away.

Kynyn of Shun came in triumph to Delgauna's palace. Standing beside the litter, she gave her hand to the man, who stepped out and walked beside her through the bronze door.

The men of Shun are tall and strong, bred to stand beside their women in war as well as love, and this red-haired daughter of the Drylands was enough to stop a woman's heart with his proud step and his white shoulders, and his eyes that were the colour of smoke. Stark's gaze followed his from a distance.

Presently in the council room were gathered Delgauna and the outlanders, Kynyn and her bright-haired king – and no other Martians but those three.

Kynyn sprawled out in the high seat at the head of the table. Her face was beaming. She wiped the sweat off it, and then filled a goblet with wine, looking around the room with her bright blue eyes.

'Fill up, gentlemen. I'll give you a toast.' She lifted the goblet. 'Here's to the secret of the Ramas, and the gift of life!'

Stark put down her goblet, still empty. She stared directly at Kynyn.

'You have no secret,' said Stark deliberately.

Kynyn sat perfectly still, except that, very slowly, she put her own goblet down. Nobody else moved.

Stark's voice sounded loud in the stillness.

'Furthermore,' she said, 'that demonstration in the square was a lie from beginning to end.'

4

Stark's words had the effect of an electric shock on the listeners. Delgauna's black brows went up, and the man came forward a little to stare at the Earthwoman with profound interest.

Kynyn asked a question, of nobody in particular. 'Who,' she demanded, 'is this great black ape?'

Delgauna told her.

'Ah, yes,' said Kynyn. 'Erica Joan Stark, the wild woman from Mercury.' She scowled threateningly. 'Very well – explain how I lied in the square!'

'Certainly. First of all, the Earth girl was a prisoner. She was told what she had to do to save her neck, and then was carefully coached in her 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 woman poison, probably by means of a sharp point on the crown. I saw her wince when you put it on her.'

Stark paused. 'The old woman died. The girl went through her sham. And that was that.'

Again there was a flat silence. Luhara crouched over the table, her face avid with hope. The man's eyes dwelt on Stark and did not turn away.

Then, suddenly, Kynyn laughed. She roared with it until the tears ran.

'It was a good show, though,' she said at last. 'Damned good. You'll have to admit that. The crowd swallowed it, horns, hoof and hide.'

She got up and came round to Stark, clapping her on the shoulder, a blow that would have laid a lesser woman flat.

'I like you, wild woman. 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, Kynyn, 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.' Kynyn lapsed abruptly into perfectly good colloquial English. 'I was on Terra, learning about things like the Purcell electronic discharge.'

Reaching over, she poured wine for Stark and held it out to her. '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.'

Kynyn looked at her. 'What now?'

'You're lying to your people,' Stark said flatly. 'You're making false promises, to lead them into war.'

Kynyn was genuinely puzzled by Stark's anger. 'But of course!' she said. 'Is there anything new or strange in that?'

Luhara spoke up, her voice acid with hate. 'Watch out for her, Kynyn. She'll sell you out, she'll cut your throat, if she thinks it best for the barbarians.'

Delgauna said, 'Stark's reputation is known all over the system. There's no need to tell us that again.'

'No.' Kynyn shook her head, looking very candidly at Stark. 'We sent for you, didn't we, knowing that? All right.'

She stepped back a little, so that the others were included in what she 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 women 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 all. Now do you understand?'

Stark studied her, with her cold cat-eyes. 'Where do the women of Valkis come in – the women of Jekkara and Barakesh? Where do we come in, the hired bravoes?'

Kynyn smiled. It was a perfectly sincere smile, and it had no humour in it, only a great pride and a cheerful cruelty.

'We're going to build an empire,' she said softly. 'The City-States are disorganised, 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 women come in,' said Delgauna, and laughed. 'We low-Canallers live by rapine.'

'And you,' said Kynyn, 'the hired bravoes', are in it to help. I need you and the Venusian, Stark, to train my women, to plan campaigns, to give me all you know of guerrilla fighting. Knighton has a fast cruiser. She'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, Delgauna! Arrod organised and bossed the Sisterhood of the Little Worlds, which had the Space Patrol going mad for years. She can do the same for us. So there you have it. Now, Stark, what do you say?'

The Earthwoman answered slowly, 'I'll go along with you – as long as no harm comes to the tribes.'

Kynyn 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 Kynyn. '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.'

She looked around then and said plaintively, 'And now can we sit down and drink like civilised women?'

They sat. The wine went round, and the vultures of Valkis drank to each other's luck and loot, and Stark learned that the man's name was Berild.

Kynyn was happy. She had made her point with the people, and she was celebrating. But Stark noticed that though her tongue grew thick, it did not loosen.

Luhara grew steadily more morose and silent, glancing covertly across the table at Stark. Delgauna toyed with her goblet, and her yellow gaze which gave nothing away moved restlessly between Berild and Stark.

Berild drank not at all. He sat a little apart, with his face in shadow, and his red mouth smiled. His thoughts, too, were his own secret. But Stark knew that he was still watching her, and she knew that Delgauna was aware of it.

Presently Kynyn said, 'Delgauna and I have some talking to do, so I'll bid you gentlemen farewell for the present. You, Stark, and Luhara – I'm going back into the desert at midnight, and you're going with me, so you'd better get some sleep.'

Stark nodded. She rose and went out, with the others.

An attendant showed her to her quarters, in the north wing. Stark had not rested for twenty-four hours, and she was glad of the chance to sleep.

She lay down. The wine spun in her head, and Berild's smile mocked her. Then her thoughts turned to Ashton, and her promise. Presently she slept, and dreamed.

She was a girl on Mercury again, running down a path that led from a cave mouth to the floor of a valley. Above her the mountains rose into the sky and were lost beyond the shallow atmosphere. The rocks danced in the terrible heat, but the soles of her feet were like iron, and trod them lightly. She 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 girl N'Chaka that it could ever be cold again, yet she knew that when darkness came there would be ice on the shallows of the river. The gods were constantly at war.

She passed a place, ruined by earthquake. It was a mine, and N'Chaka remembered dimly that she had once lived there, with several white-skinned creatures shaped like herself. She went on without a second glance.

She was searching for Tika. When she was old enough, she would mate with him. She wanted to hunt with his now, for he was fleet and as keen as she at scenting out the great lizards.

She heard his voice calling her name. There was terror in it, and N'Chaka began to run. She saw him, crouched between two huge boulders, his light fur stained with blood.

A vast black-winged shadow swooped down upon her. It glared at her with its yellow eyes, and its long beak tore at her. She thrust her spear at it, but talons hooked into her shoulder, and the golden eyes were close to her, bright and full of death.

She knew those eyes. Tika screamed, but the sound faded, everything faded but those eyes. She sprang up, grappling with the thing ...

A woman's voice yelling, a woman's hands thrusting her away. The dream receded. Stark came back to reality, dropping the scared attendant who had come to waken her.

The woman cringed away from her. Delgauna sent me. She wants you – in the council room.' Then she turned and fled.

Stark shook herself. The dream had been terribly real. She went down to the council room. It was dusk now, and the torches were lighted.

Delgauna was waiting, and Berild sat beside her at the table. They were alone there. Delgauna looked up, with her golden eyes.

'I have a job for you, Stark,' she said. 'You remember the captain of Kynyn's women, in the square today?'

'I do.'

'Her name is Freka, and she's a good woman, but she's addicted to a certain vice. She'll be up to her ears in it by now, and somebody has to get her back by the time Kynyn leaves. Will you see to it?'

Stark glanced at Berild. It seemed to her that he was amused, whether at her or at Delgauna she could not tell. She asked,

'Where will I find her?'

'There's only one place where she can get her particular poison – Kale's, out on the edge of Valkis. It's in the old city, beyond the lower quays.' Delgauna 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,' she said, and went out into the dusky streets of Valkis.

She crossed a square, heading away from the palace. A twisting lane swallowed her up. And quite suddenly, someone took her arm and said rapidly.

'Smile at me, and then turn aside into the alley.'

The hand on her arm was small and brown, the voice very pretty with its accompaniment of little chiming bells. She smiled, as he had bade her, and turned aside into the alley, which was barely more than a crack between two rows of houses.

Swiftly, she put her hands against the wall, so that the boy was prisoned between them. A green-eyed boy, with golden bells braided in his black hair, and impudent pectorals bare above a jewelled girdle. A handsome boy, with a proud look to him.

The serving boy who had stood beside the litter in the square, and had watched Kynyn with such bleak hatred.

'Well,' said Stark. 'And what do you want with me, little one?'

He answered, 'My name is Fian. And I do not intend to kill you, neither will I run away.'

Stark let her hands drop. 'Did you follow me, Fian?'

'I did. Delgauna'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 Kynyn, and I heard Delgauna'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. Kynyn lied to you. She will use you, and then kill you, as she will use and then destroy her own people.' His voice was hot with bitter fury.

Stark gave his a slow smile that might have meant anything, or nothing.

'You're a Valkisian, Fian. What do you care what happens to the barbarians?'

His slightly tilted green eyes looked scornfully into hers.

'I'm not trying to trap you, Earthwoman. I hate Kynyn. And my fathers was a man of the desert.'

He paused, then went on sombrely, 'Also, I serve the sir Berild, and I have learned many things. There is trouble coming, greater trouble than Kynyn knows.' He asked, suddenly, 'What do you know of the Ramas?'

'Nothing,' she answered, 'except that they don't exist now, if they ever did.'

Fian gave her an odd look. 'Perhaps they don't. Will you listen to me, Earthwoman from Mercury? Will you get away, now that you know you're marked for death?'

Stark said, 'No.'

'Even if I tell you that Delgauna has set a trap for you at Kale's?'

'No. But I will thank you for your warning, Fian.'

She bent and kissed him, because he was very young and honest. Then she turned and went on her way.

5

Night came swiftly. Stark left behind her 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.

She saw the lower quays, great looming shapes of marble rounded and worn by time, and went toward them. Presently she found that she 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.

She passed under the shadow of the quays, and turned into a broad way that had once led up from the harbour. A little way ahead, on the other side, she saw a tall building, half fallen in ruin. Its windows were shattered, 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 she had no more weight to her than a drift of smoke. Once a door banged and a woman came out of Kale's and passed by, going down to Valkis. Stark saw her face in the moonlight. It was the face of a beast, rather than a woman. She muttered to herself as she went, and once she laughed, and Stark felt a loathing in her.

She 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 Kale's door.

Stark found a little shard of rock and tossed it, so that it make a sharp snicking sound against the shadowed wall beyond her. Then she held her 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. She flung open the door of Kale'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 women and men whose faces were slack and bestial.

Stark realized now what secret vice Kale sold here. Shanga – the going back – the radiation that caused temporary artificial atavism and let women wallow for a time in beasthood. It was supposed to have been stamped out when the Sir Fand's dark Shanga ring had been destroyed. But it still persisted, in places like thim outside the law.

She looked for Freka, and recognized the tall barbarian. She was sprawled under one of the Shanga lamps, eyes closed, face brutish, growling and twitching in sleep like the beast she had temporarily become.

A voice spoke from behind Stark's shoulder. 'I am Kale. What do you wish, Outlander?'

She turned. Kale might have been beautiful once, a thousand years ago as you reckon sin. He wore still the sweet chiming bells in his hair, and Stark thought of Fian. The man's ravaged face turned her sick. It was like the reedy, piping music, woven out of the very heart of evil.

Yet his eyes were shrewd, and she knew that he had not missed her searching look around the room, nor her interest in Freka. There was a note of warning in his voice.

She did not want trouble, yet. Not until she found some hint of the trap Fian had told her of.

She said, 'Bring me wine.'

Will you try the lamp of Going-back, Outlander? It brings much joy.'

'Perhaps later. Now, I wish wine.'

He went away, clapping his hands for a slatternly boy who came between the sprawled figures with an earthern mug. Stark sat down beside a table, where her back was to the wall and she could see both the door and the whole room.

Kale had returned to his own heap of furs by the door, but his basilisk eyes were alert.

Stark made a pretence of drinking, but her mind was very busy, very cold.

Perhaps this, in itself, was the trap. Freka was temporarily a beast. She would fight, and Kale would shriek, and the other dull-eyed brutes would rise and fight also.

But she would have needed no warning about that – and Delgauna herself had said there would be trouble.

No. There was something more.

She let her gaze wander over the room. It was large, and there were other rooms off it, the openings hung with ragged curtains. Through the rents, Stark could see others of Kale'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 herself.

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.

She beckoned Kale to her. 'I will try the lamp,' she said. 'But I wish privacy. Have it brought to that room, there.'

Kale 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.'

She flung down a coin and went out. Moving swiftly outside, she placed her eye to a crack in the nearest shutter, and waited.

Luhara of Venus came out of the empty room. Her face was worried, and Stark smiled. She went back and stood flat against the wall beside the door.

In a moment it opened and the Venusian came out, drawing her gun as she did so.

Stark jumped her.

Luhara let out one angry cry. Her gun went off a vicious streak of flame across the moonlight, and then Stark's great hand crushed the bones of her wrist together so that she dropped it clashing on the stones. She whirled around, raking Stark's face with her nails as she clawed for the Earthwoman's eyes, and Stark hit her. Luhara fell, rolling over, and before she could scramble up again Stark had picked up the gun and thrown it away into the ruins across the street.

Luhara came up from the pavement in one catlike spring. Stark fell with her, back through Kale's door, and they rolled together among the foul furs and cushions. Luhara was built of spring steel, with no softness in her anywhere, and her long fingers were locked around Stark's throat.

Kale screamed with fury. He caught a whip from among his cushions – a traditional weapon along the Low Canals – and began to lash the two women impartially, his hair flying in tangledlocks across his face. The bestial figures under the lamps shambled to their feet, and growled.

The long lash ripped Stark's shirt and the flesh of her back beneath it. She snarled and staggered to her feet, with Luhara still clinging to the death grip on her throat. She pushed Luhara's face way from her with both hands and threw herself forward, over a table, so that Luhara was crushed beneath her.

The Venusian's breath left her with a whistling grunt. Her lingers relaxed. Stark struck her hands away. She rose and bent over Luhara and picked her up, gripping her cruelly so that she turned white with the pain, and raised her high and flung her bodily into the growling, beast-faced women who were shambling toward her.

Kale leaped at Stark, cursing, striking her with the coiling lash. She turned. The thin veneer of civilisation was gone from Stark now, erased in a second by the first hint of battle. Her eyes blazed with a cold light. She took the whip out of Kale's hand and laid her palm across his evil face, and he fell and lay still.

She faced the ring of bestial, Shanga-sodden women who walled her off from what she had been sent to do. There was a reddish tinge to her vision, partly blood, partly sheer rage. She could see Freka standing erect in the corner, her head weaving from side to side brutishly.

Stark raised the whip and strode into the ring of women who were no longer quite women.

Hands struck and clawed her. Bodies reeled and fell away. Blank eyes glittered, and red mouths squealed, and there was a mingling of snarls and bestial laughter in her ears. The blood-lust had spread to these creatures now. They swarmed upon Stark and bore her down with the weight of their writhing bodies.

They bit her and savaged her in a blind way, and she fought her way up again, shaking them off with her great shoulders, trampling them under her 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 herself forward. Stark swung the loaded butt of the whip. It cracked solidly on the Shunni's temple, and she sagged into Stark's arms.

Out of the corner of her eyes, Stark saw Luhara. She had risen and crept around the edge of the fight. She was behind Stark now, and there was a knife in her hand.

Hampered by Freka's weight, Stark could not leap aside. As Luhara rushed in, she crouched and went backward, her head and shoulders taking the Venusian low in the belly. She felt the hot kiss of the blade in her flesh, but the wound was glancing, and before Luhara could strike again, Stark twisted like a great cat and struck down. Luhara's skull rang on the flagging. The Earthwoman's fist rose and fell twice. After that, Luhara did not move.

Stark got to her feet. She stood with her knees bent and her shoulders flexed, looking from side to side, and the sound that came out of her throat was one of pure savagery.

She 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 her. 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.

Kale sat up on the floor, and snarled, 'Get out.'

Stark stood a moment or two longer, looking at them. Then she lifted Freka to her feet and laid her over her shoulder like a sack of meal and went out, moving neither fast nor slow, but in a straight line, and way was made for her.

She carried the Shunni down through the silent streets, and into the twisting, crowded ways of Valkis. There, too, the people stared at her and drew back, out of her path. She came to Delgauna's palace. The guards closed in behind her, but they did not ask that she stop.

Delgauna was in the council room, and Berild was still with her. It seemed that they had been waiting, over their wine and their private talk. Delgauna rose to her feet as Stark came in, so sharply that her goblet fell and spilled a red pool of wine at her feet.

Stark let the Shunni drop to the floor.

'I have brought Freka,' she said. 'Luhara is still at Kale's.'

She looked into Delgauna's eyes, golden and cruel, the eyes of him, dream. It was hard not to kill.

Suddenly the man laughed, very clear and ringing, and his laughter was all for Delgauna.

'Well done, wild woman,' he said to Stark. 'Kynyn is lucky to have such a captain. One word for the future, though – watch out for Freka. She won't forgive you this.'

Stark said thickly, looking at Delgauna, 'This hasn't been a night for forgiveness.' Then she added, 'I can handle Freka.'

Berild said, 'I like you, wild woman.' His eyes dwelt on Stark's face, curious, compelling. 'Ride beside me when we go. I would know more about you.'

And he smiled.

A dark flush crept over Delgauna's face. In a voice tight with I fury she said, 'Perhaps you've forgotten something, Berild. There is nothing for you in this barbarian, this creature of an hour!'

She would have said more in her anger, but Berild said sharply,

'We will not speak of time. Go now, Stark. Be ready at midnight.'

Stark went. And as she went, her brow was furrowed deep by a strange doubt.

6

At midnight, in the great square of the slave market, Kynyn's caravan formed again and went out of Valkis with thundering drums and skirling pipes. Delgauna was there to see them go, and the cheering of the people rang after them on the desert wind.

Stark rode alone. She was in a brooding mood and wanted no company, least of all that of the Sir Berild. He was beautiful, he was dangerous, and he belonged to Kynyn, or to Delgauna, or perhaps to both of them. In Stark's experience, men like that were sudden death, and she wanted no part of him. At any rate, not yet.

Luhara rode ahead with Kynyn. She had come dragging into the square at the mounting, her face battered and swollen, an ugly look in her eyes. Kynyn gave one quick look from her to Stark, who had her own scars, and said harshly,

'Delgauna 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 her mouth shut. Luhara muttered assent, and they had not looked at each other since.

Freka rode in her customary place by Kynyn, which put her near to Luhara. 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 her saddle, but Stark had seen her face in the torchlight, sick and sweating, with the brute look still clouding her eyes. There was a purple mark on her temple, but Stark was quite sure that Berild had spoken the truth – Freka would not forgive her either the indignity or the hangover of her 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 her than the cities of women.

After a while there was a jangling of brazen bangles behind and Fian came up. She smiled at him, and he said rather sullenl, 'The Sir Berild sent me, to remind you of his wish.'

Stark glanced to where the scarlet-curtained litter rocked mg, and her eyes glinted.

'He's not one to let go of a thing, is he?'

'No.' Fian saw that no one was within earshot, and then said quietly, 'Was it as I said, at Kale's?'

Stark nodded. 'I think, little one, that I owe you my life. Luhara would have killed me as soon as I tackled Freka.'

She reached over and touched his hand where it lay on the bridle. He smiled, a young boy's smile that seemed very sweet in the moonlight, honest and comradely.

It was odd to be talking of death with a pretty boy in the moonlight.

Stark said, 'Why does Delgauna want to kill me?'

'She gave no reason, when she spoke to the woman from Venus. But perhaps I can guess. She knows that you're as strong as she is, and so she fears you. Also, the Sir Berild looked at you in a certain way.'

'I thought Berild was Kynyn's man.'

'Perhaps he is – for the time,' answered Fian enigmatically. Then he shook his 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.'

His eyes pleaded with her, and Stark realised with a shock that Fian, too, stood on the edge of a quicksand.

'Don't be afraid,' she said, and meant it. 'We'd better go.'

He swung his beast around, and as he did so he whispered, 'Be careful, Erica Joan Stark!'

Stark nodded. She rode behind him, thinking that she liked the sound of her name on his lips.

The Sir Berild lay among his furs and cushions, and even then there was no indolence about him. He was relaxed as a cat is, perfectly at ease and yet vibrant with life. In the shadows of the litter his skin showed silver-white and his loosened hair was a sweet darkness.

'Are you stubborn, wild woman?' he asked. 'Or do you find me distasteful?'

She had not realised before how rich and soft his voice was. She looked down at the magnificent supple length of him, and said,

'I find you most damnably attractive – and that's why I'm stubborn.'

'Afraid?'

'I'm taking Kynyn's pay. Should I take her man also?'

He laughed, half scornfully. 'Kynyn's ambitions leave no room for me. We have an agreement, because a queen must have a king – and she finds my counsel useful. You see, I am ambitious, too! Apart from that, there is nothing.'

Stark looked at him, trying to read his smoke-grey eyes in the gloom. 'And Delgauna?'

'She wants me, but ...' He hesitated, and then went on, in a tone quite different from before, his voice low and throbbing with a secret pleasure as vast and elemental as the star-shot sky.

'I belong to no one,' he said. 'I am my own.'

Stark knew that for the moment he had forgotten her.

She rode for a time in silence, and then she said slowly, repeating Delgauna's words,

'Perhaps you have forgotten something, Berild. There is nothing for you in me, the creature of an hour.'

She saw his start, and for a moment his eyes blazed and his breath was sharply drawn. Then he laughed, and said,

'The wild woman 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 her bite is fatal.'

She leaned over in the saddle, her shoulders looming above his, naked in the biting wind.

'My hours with men are short ones,' she said. 'They come after the battle, when there is time for such things. Perhaps then I'll come and see you.'

She spurred away and left his without a backward look, and the skin of her back tingled with the expectancy of a flying knife.

But the only thing that followed hers was a disturbing echo of laughter down the wind.

Dawn came. Kynyn beckoned Stark to her side, and pointed out at the cruel waste of sand, with here and there a reef of bassalt black against the burning white.

'This is the country you will lead your women over. Learn it.' She was speaking to Luhara as well. 'Learn every water hole, every vantage point, every trail that leads toward the Border. There are no better fighters than the Dryland women 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.'

Luhara 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.'

She took a deep breath and smiled, looking out over the dead sea bottom toward the Border, and her eyes held the same pitiless light as the sun that baked the desert.

'Very soon, now,' she said, more to herself than the others. 'Only a handful of days before we drown the Border states in their own blood. And after that ...'

She laughed, very softly, and said no more. Stark could believe that what Berild said of hers was true. There was a flame of ambition in Kynyn that would let nothing stand in its way.

She measured the size and the strength of the tall barbarian, the eagle look of her face and the iron that lay beneath her joviality. Then Stark, too, stared off toward the Border and wondered if she would ever see Tarak or hear Simone 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 women 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 he send for her.

Fian would pass her in the camp, and smile sidelong, and go on. For his sake, she did not stop him.

Neither Luhara nor Freka came near her. They avoided her pointedly, except when Kynyn 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 her mount, her back guarded and her gun loose. The hard lessons learned in her childhood had stayed with her, and if there was a footfall near her in the dust she 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 she looked toward the north, where there was a long slope as flat as her palm that stretched away farther than she could see.

A restless unease grew within her. Presently she spurred ahead to join Kynyn.

'There is a storm coming,' she said, and turned her head northward again.

Kynyn looked at her curiously.

'You even have the right direction,' she said. 'One might think you were a native.' She, 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.'

She swore, with a curious admixture of blunt Anglo-Saxon in her 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 him, 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. She 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 heir speed. They were nervous and fidgety, inclined to break nit 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. Fian 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 men, who were only a few feet away but already hidden by the veil of mingled dust and sand. Someone blundered into her in the murk. Long hair whipped across her face and she reached out, crying 'Fian! Fian!' A man's hand caught hers, and a voice answered, but she could not hear the words.

Then, suddenly, her beast was crowded by other scaly bodies. The man's grip had broken. Hard feminine hands clawed at her. She could make out, dimly, the features of two women, close to hers.

Luhara, and Freka.

Her beast gave a great lurch, and sprang forward. Stark was dragged from the saddle, to fall backward into the raging sand.

7

She lay half-stunned for a moment, her breath knocked out of her. There was a terrible reptilian screaming sounding thin through the roar of the wind. Vague shapes bolted past her, and twice she was nearly crushed by their trampling hooves.

Luhara 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 woman.

Stark got to her feet, and a human body struck her at the knees so that she went down again. She grappled with it, snarling, before she realised that the flesh between her hands was soft and draped in silken cloth. Then she saw that she was holding Berild.

'It was I,' he gasped, 'and not Fian.'

His words reached her very faintly, though she knew he was yelling at the top of his lungs. He must have been knocked from his own mount when Luhara thrust between them.

Gripping his tightly, so that he should not be blown away, Stark struggled up again. With all her strength, it was almost impossible to stand.

Blinded, deafened, half strangled, she fought her way forward a few paces, and suddenly one of the pack beasts loomed shadow-like beside her, going by with a rush and a squeal.

By the grace of Providence and her own swift reflexes, she caught its pack lashings, clinging with the tenacity of a woman 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 man clambered to its back, twisting his arm through the straps of the pad. A silken scarf whipped toward her. She 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 she had stood still, Stark's legs were buried to the knees in a substratum of sand that rolled like water. She pulled herself free and started on, going nowhere, remembering Kynyn's words.

Berild ripped his thin robe apart and gave her another strip of silk for herself. She bound it over her 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 woman, 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 nightstallion. She shut her mind to them, in a way that a civilised woman would have found impossible. In her 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 Fian with his 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 they 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 man's strength, for she had to help his only when he fell. She had lost all feeling herself. Her body was merely a thing that continued to move only because it had been ordered not to stop.

The haze in her own mind had grown as thick as the black obscurity of the night. Berild had ridden all day, but she had walked, and there was an end even to her strength. She was approaching it now, and was too weary even to be afraid.

She became aware at some indeterminate time that Berild had fallen and was dragging his weight against the straps. She turned blindly to help his up. He was saying something, crying her name, striking at her so that she should hear his words and understand.

At last she did. She pulled the wrappings from her face and breathed clean air. The wind had fallen. The sky was growing clear.

She dropped in her tracks and slept, with the exhausted man half dead beside her.

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.

He thought a minute, looking at the sun. 'The wind blew from the north,' he said. 'Therefore we have come south from the track. Sinharat lies that way, across the waste they call the Belly of Stones.' He pointed to the north and east.

'How far?'

'Seven, eight days, afoot.'

Stark measured their supply of water and shook her head. 'It'll be dry walking.'

She rose and took up the skin, and Berild came beside her without a word. His red hair hung loose over him shoulders. The rags of his silken robe had been torn away by the wind, leaving his only the loose skirt of the desert men, and his belt and collar of jewels.

He walked erect with a steady, swinging stride, and it was almost impossible for Stark to remember his as he had been, riding like a lazy king in his 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. She made Berild lie in the shadow of her own body, and she watched his face, relaxed and unfamiliar in sleep.

For the first time, then, she was conscious of a strangeness in him. She had seen so little of his before, in Valkis, and almost nothing on the trail. Now, there was little of his mind or heart that he could conceal from her.

Or was there? There were moments, while he slept, when hr shadows of strange dreams crossed his face. Sometimes, in t she unguarded moment of waking, she would see in his eyes a Iook she could not read, and her 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. His white skin was darkened by the sun and his hair became a wild red mane, but he smiled and set his feet resolutely by hers, and Stark thought he was the most beautiful creature she 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 she seen a place more cruel and utterly forsaken of gods or women.

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 colour 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. He sat down and bent his head over him hands.

'I am tired,' he 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,' she said.

Berild raised his head. 'Somehow I believe you.' He rose slowly and put his hands on her breast, over the strong beating of her heart.

'Give me your strength, wild woman,' he whispered. 'I shall need it.'

She drew his to her and kissed him, 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.

8

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 her boyhood that it did not occur to her 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 her 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 man must keep moving or freeze.

Stark's mind grew clouded. She spoke from time to time, in a croaking whisper, dropping back into the harsh mother-tongue of the Twilight Belt. It seemed to her that she was hunting, as she had so many times before, in the waterless places – for the blood of the great lizard would save her 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 him. His face stared up at her, while in the moonlight, his eyes burning and strange.

I will not die!' he whispered, not to her, but to the gods. 'I will not

die!'

And he clawed the sand and the bitter rocks, dragging himself onward It was uncanny, the madness that he had for life.

Stark raised his up and carried him. Her breath came in deep

sobbing gasps. After a while she, too, fell. She went on like a beast on all

fours, dragging the man.

She knew dimly that she was climbing. There was a glimmering of dawn in the sky. Her hands slipped on a lip of sand and she went rolling down a smooth slope. At length she stopped and lay in her back like a dead thing.

The sun was high when consciousness returned to her. She saw Berild lying near her and crawled to him, shaking his until his eyes opened. His hands moved feebly and his lips formed the same four words. I will not die.

Stark strained her eyes to the horizon, praying for a glimpse of Sinharat, but there was nothing, only emptiness and sand. With great difficulty she got the man to his feet, supporting him.

She tried to tell his that they must go on, but she could no longer form the words. She could only gesture and urge his forward, in the direction of the city.

But he refused to go. 'Too far ... die ... without water ...' She knew that he was right, but still she was not ready to give up.

He began to move away from her, toward the south, and she thought that he had gone mad and was wandering. Then she saw that he 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 his throat. He began to plod toward the distant promontory.

Stark caught up with him. She tried to stop him, but he would not be stopped, turning a feral glare upon her.

He croaked, 'Water!' and pointed.

She was sure now that he was mad. She told his so, forcing the painful words out of her throat, reminding his of Sinharat and that he was going away from any possible help.

He said again, quite sanely, 'Too far. Two – three days without water,' He pointed. 'Monastery – old well – a chance ...'

Stark decided that she had little to lose by trusting him. She nodded and went with his 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 man. A great rage and a deep sense of futility came over her. They were indeed lost.

But Berild had gone a few steps farther. With a hoarse cry, he 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 she 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, his eyes closed. Stark got the uncanny feeling that he was visualising the place as it had been, though the wall must have been dust a thousand years ago. Presently he moved. She followed him, and it was strange to see him, on the naked sand, treading the arbitrary patterns of vanished corridors.

He came to a halt, in a broad flat space that might once have been a central courtyard. There he fell on his knees and began to dig.

Stark got down beside him. 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. She 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, by the well, drowsy with an animal sense of rest and repletion.And Stark looked at the man and said, 'I know you now.'

'What do you know, wild woman?'

Stark said quietly, 'You are a Rama.'

He did not answer at once. Then he said, 'I was bred in these 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.'

She leaned forward, studying him.'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 Kynyn herself, knows of it but you.'

'You dream, wild woman. The moon is in your eyes.'

Stark shook her head slowly. 'I know.'

He laughed, and stretched his arms wide on the sand.

'But I am young,' he said. 'And women have told me I am beautiful. It is good to be young, for youth has nothing to do with ashes and empty skulls.'

He touched her arm, and little darts of fire went through her flesh, warm from her fingertips.

'Forget your dreams, wild woman. They're madness, gone with the morning.'

She looked down at his in the clear pale light, and he was young, and beautifully made, and his lips were smiling.

She bent her head. His arms went round her. His hair blew soft against her cheek. Then, suddenly, he set his teeth cruelly into her lip. She cried out and thrust him away, and he sat back on his heels, mocking her.

'That,' he said, 'is because you called Fian's name instead of mine, when the storm broke.'

Stark cursed him. There was a taste of blood in her mouth. She reached out and caught him, and again he 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.

9

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 she came closer to it, plodding slowly through the sand, she saw that the place was no more than a beautiful corpse, the lovely towers broken, the roofless palaces open to the sky. Whatever life Kynyn and her 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?' she asked, 'with the blue water around it, and the banners flying?'

Berild turned a dark, calculating look upon her.

'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 woman,' he 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 Kynyn were encamped. The tall warriors of Kesh and Shun waiting, with their men 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 recognised as Knighton's made an ugly, jarring incongruity.

Lookouts sighted the two toiling figures in the distance. Women and men and children began to stream out across the sand, and presently a great cheering arose. Where she 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 women would have carried Stark also, but she fought diem off.

Broad flights of steps were cut in the coral. The throng flowed upward along them. Ahead of them all went Erica Joan Stark, and Hie was smiling. From time to time she asked a question, and women drew back from that question, and her smile.

Up the steps and into the streets of Sinharat she went, with a slow, restless stride, asking,

'Where is Luhara of Venus?'

Every woman there read death in her face, but they did not try to stop her.

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.

Luhara of Venus came down the terraced steps, fresh from sleep, her pale hair tumbled, her eyes still drowsy.

Others came through the door behind her. Stark did not see them. They did not matter. Berild didn't matter, calling her name from where he sat on the shoulders of the chiefs. Nothing, no one mattered, but herself and Luhara.

She crossed the square, not hurrying, a dark ravaged giant in rags. She saw Luhara pause on the bottom step. She saw the sleep and the vagueness go out of the Venusian's eyes as they rested first on the red-haired man, then on herself. She saw the fear come into them, and the undying hate.

Someone got between her and Luhara. Stark lifted the woman and flung her aside without breaking her stride, and went on. Luhara half turned. She would have run away, back into the palace, but there were too many now between her and the door. She crouched and drew her gun.

Stark sprang.

She came like a great black panther leaping, and she struck low. Luhara's shot went over her back. After that there was no more shooting. There was a moment, terribly short and silent, in which the two women lay entangled, straining against each other in a sort of stasis. Then Luhara screamed.

Stark knew dimly that there were hands, many of them, trying to drag her away. She clung growling to the Venusian until she was torn loose by main force. She struggled against her captors, and through a red haze she saw Kynyn's face, close to her and very angry. Luhara was not yet dead.

'I warned you, Stark!' said Kynyn furiously. 'I warned you.'

Women were bending over Luhara. Knighton, Walsh, Themis, Arrod. Stark saw that Delgauna was among them. She did not question at the time how word had gone back to Valkis and sent Delgauna racing across the dead sea bottom with her hired bravos to search for the red-haired man. It was right that Delgauna should be there.

In short ragged sentences, Stark told how Luhara and Freka had tried to kill her, and how Berild had been lost with her.

Kynyn turned to the Venusian. Death was already glazing the cloud-grey eyes, but it had not quenched the hatred and venom.

'She lies,' whispered Luhara. 'I saw her – she tried to run away and take the man with her.'

Luhara of Venus, taking vengeance with her last breath.

Freka pushed forward, transparently eager to pick up her cue. 'It is so,' she said. 'I was with Luhara. I saw it also.'

Delgauna laughed. Cruel, silent laughter. She stood up, and looked at Berild.

Berild's eyes were blazing. He ignored Delgauna and spoke to Kynyn.

'You fool. Can't you see that they hate her? What Stark says is true. And I would have died in the desert because of them, if Stark hadn't been a better woman than all of you.'

'Strange words,' said Delgauna, 'coming from a woman's own mate. Perhaps Luhara did lie, after all. Perhaps it was not Stark who tried to run away, but you.'

He cursed her, with an ancient curse, and Kynyn looked at him, sullenly. She said to the women who held Stark, 'Chain her below, in the dungeons.' Then she took Berild's arm and went with his into the palace.

Stark fought until someone behind her knocked her on the head with the butt of a spear. The last thing she saw was the face of Fian, standing out from the crowd, wide-eyed with pity and love.

She came to in a place of cold, dry stone. There was an iron collar around her 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 entrance. Beyond was an open well, with other cell doors around it, and above were thick stone gratings open to the sky. She guessed that the place was built beneath some inner court of she palace.

There were no other prisoners. But there was a guard, a thick-shouldered barbarian who sat on the execution block in the centre of the well, with a sword and a jug of wine. A guard who watched the captive Stark, and smiled.

Freka.

When she saw that Stark was awake, Freka lifted up the jug and laughed. 'Here's to Death,' she said. For no one else comes here!'

She drank, and after that she did not speak, only sat and smiled.

Stark said nothing either. She waited, with the same unhuman patience she had shown when she waited for her 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 woman, sitting on the block. Stark's eyes glowed.

The empty jug dropped and broke. Freka rose. She took the naked sword in her hand and crossed the open space to the cell. She lifted the outer bar away. It fell with a great echoing clang, and Freka entered.

'Stand up, Outlander,' she 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 her back against the wall, to give herself all the slack of the chain.

She saw the bright steel glimmer in the air, up and down again, but when the blow fell she had leaped aside, and the point struck ringing against the stone. Stark darted in to grapple.

Her fingers slipped on hard muscle, and Freka wrenched away. She was a fighting woman, and no weakling. The iron collar dug painfully into the Earthwoman's throat and the heavy chain threw her backward. Freka laughed, deep in her bosom . The sword glinted hungrily.

Then, as though he had taken shape suddenly from the shadows, Fian was in the doorway. The little gun in his hand made a hissing spurt of flame. Freka screamed once, and fell. She did not move again.

'The swine,' Fian said, without emotion. 'Delgauna ordered her to wait, until it was sure that Kynyn would not come down to talk to you. Then the story was to be that you had escaped somehow, with Berild's aid.'

He stepped over the body and unlocked the iron collar with a key he took from his girdle.

Stark took his slender shoulders gently between her hands. 'Are you a witch-girl, that you know all things and always come when I need you?'

He gave her a deep, strange look. In the dusk, his proud young face was unfamiliar, touched with something fey and sad. She wished that she could see his eyes more clearly.

'I know all things because I must,' he told her wearily. 'And I think that you are my only hope – perhaps the only hope of Mars.'

She drew his to her, and kissed him, and stroked his dark head. 'You're too young to concern yourself with the destinies of worlds.'

She felt his tremble. 'The youth of the body is only illusion, when the mind is old.'

'And is yours old, little one?'

'Old,' he whispered. 'As old as Berild's.'

She felt sher tears warm against her skin, and he was like a child in his arms.

'Then you know about him,' said Stark.

She paused. 'And Delgauna?'

'Delgauna also.'

'I thought so,' Stark said. She 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 he could get the key from Kynyn. He is waiting for you.' He stirred Freka's body with his foot. 'Bring that. hat. We'll hide it in the pit she meant for you.'

Stark heaved the body over her shoulder and followed the boy through a twisting maze of corridors, some pitch dark, some feebly lighted by the moons. Fian moved as surely as though he 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 Fian whispered. 'Here. Be careful.'

He put out a hand to guide her, but Stark's eyes were like a cat's in the dark. She 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 her sword in after her.

'You won't need it,' Fian told her, 'and besides, it would be recognised. This will be a bitter night enough, without rousing the women of Shun over Freka's death.'

Stark listened to the distant sliding echoes from the pit, and shivered. She had so nearly finished there herself. She was glad to follow Fian away from that place of darkness and silent death.

She stopped his in a place where a bar of moonlight came splashing through a great crack in the tunnel roof.

'Now,' she said, 'we will talk.'

He 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 Kynyn's. Tell me.'

'Kynyn's truth is simple,' he answered, speaking slowly, choosing his words. 'He wants land and power, conquest. She will pour out the blood of her people for that, and after that she plans to use the women of the Low-Canals under Delgauna to keep the tribesmen in line. It may be true, as she said, that they would be satisfied with grazing land and water – but they would lose their freedom, and their pride, and I think she has judged them wrongly. I think they would revolt.'

He 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 Delgauna and Berild?'

Fian said softly. 'Their truth, too, is simple. They took Kynyn's idea of empire, and stretched it further. It was Delgauna's idea to bring the strangers in. They would use Kynyn and the tribes until the victory was won. Then they would do away with Kynyn and rule themselves – with the outlanders and their ships and their powerful weapons to oppress Low-Canaler and Drylander alike.

'That way, they could rape a world. More outland vultures would come, drawn by the smell of loot. The Martian women would fight as long as there was the hope of plunder – after that, they would be slaves to hold the empire. Their mistresses would grow fat on tribute from the City-States and from the women 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. She thought of others like them, and what they would do, with their talons hooked in the heart of Mars. She thought of Delgauna's yellow eyes.

She thought of Berild, and she was sick with loathing.

Fian came close to her, speaking in a different tone that had care and anxiety only for her.

'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 own heart, Erica Joan Stark. I cannot tell you more.'

She kissed his again, because he was sweet and very brave. Then he led her on through the dark labyrinth, to where Berild was waiting, with his dangerous beauty and all the evil of the ages in his soul.

10

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 the 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 naming jewels.

Berild was there. His wonderful hair was dressed and shining, and his body was clothed all in white, his arms and shoulders warm bronze from the kiss of the desert sun.

Kynyn was there, also. She stood motionless and silent, and she did not so much as turn her head when Fian and Stark came in. Her eyes were wide open and blank as a blind woman's.

'I have been waiting,' said Berild, 'and the time is short.'

He seemed angry and impatient, and Stark said, Freka is dead. It was necessary to hide her body.'

He nodded and turned to the boy. 'Go now, Fian.'

Fian bent his head and went away. He did not look at Stark. It was as though he had no interest in anything that happened.

Stark looked at Kynyn, who had not moved or spoken.

'She is safe enough,' said Berild, answering Stark's unspoken question. 'I drugged her wine so that her mind was opened to mine, and she is my creature as long as I will it.'

Hypnosis, Stark thought. Her nerves were beginning to do strange things. She wished desperately that she were back in the cell facing Freka's sword, which at least would deal with her openly and without guile or subterfuge.

Berild set his hands on Stark's shoulders, and smiled as he had done that night by the ancient well.

'I offer you three things tonight, wild woman,' he said. His eyes challenged her, and the scent of his hair was sweet and maddening.

'Your life – and power – and myself.'

Stark let her hands slip lightly down from his shoulders to his waist. 'And how will you do this thing?' she asked.

'Easily,' he said, and laughed. He was very proud, and sure of his 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 Kynyn pretended to have. I can give you life now – and forever. Remember, wild woman – forever!'

She bent her dark face to his, so that their lips touched, and murmured, 'Would I have you forever, Berild?'

'Until you tire of me – or I of you.' He kissed her, and then added mockingly, 'Delgauna has had me for a thousand years, and I am weary of her. So very weary!'

'A thousand years is a long time,' said Stark, 'and I am not Delgauna.'

'No. You're a beast, a savage, a most magnificent cold-eyed animal, and that is why I love you.' He touched the muscle of her breast, and then her 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 him.

'Simply this. I will place your mind in Kynyn's body. You will be Kynyn, with all her power. You will be able then to keep Delgauna in check – later, you can destroy her, but not until after the battle is won, for we need the women of Valkis and Jekkara. You can keep your own body safe from her, and at the worst, if by some chance she should succeed in slaying the woman she believes to be you, you will still be alive.'

'And after the battle,' said Stark softly. 'What then, Berild?'

'We will rule together.' He held her palms against his. 'You have strong hands, wild woman. Would you not like to hold a world between them – and me?'

He looked up at her, his eyes suddenly shrewd and probing. Or do you still believe the nonsense you talked to Kynyn, 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 woman without a tribe. I have no loyalties. And if I had, would I remember them now?'

She held him, as he had said, between her hands, and they were very strong.

But even then, Berild could warn her.

'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 his mouth with her own.

When he drew away, he said rather breathlessly, 'Let us hurry. The tribes are gathered, and Kynyn was to have given the signal for war at dawn. There is much I must teach you between now and then.'

He paused with his hand on the lid of the golden coffer. 'This is a secret place,' he said quietly. 'Since before the ocean died, it has been secret. Not even Kynyn knew of it. I think only Delgauna and I, the last of the Twice-Born, knew – and now you.'

'What about Fian?'

Berild shrugged. 'She is only my servant. To him, this is only a little cavern where I keep my private wealth.'

He 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 her longed to run, to be away from this whole business that smelled of evil. But the woman in her knelt at Berild's wish, and waited, and did not flinch when the blank-eyed Kynyn came like a moving corpse beside her.

Berild raised the golden lid. And there was a great silence.

On the slave block of Valkis, Kynyn 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 his 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 man so that he was like a god 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.

He set one crown on Kynyn'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 her, 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 her 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 her from cowering abjectly at Berild's feet.

He stood above her, a creature of dreams in the unearthly light. He smiled and whispered, 'Do not fear,' – and he placed the second crown upon her head.

A strange, shuddering fire swept through her. 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 she was afraid. Most shockingly afraid.

Her brain was set free, in some strange fashion. The walls of her skull vanished. Her 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 her, thickened ...

A great leaping flare of light, a distant echo of a cry that she did not recognise as her own, and then ...

Nothing.

11

She was lying on her face, her cheek pressed against the cool coral. She opened her eyes, her mind groping for the shreds of some remembered terror. She saw, vaguely at first and then with terrible clarity as her vision became clear, a woman lying close beside her.

A tall woman, very strongly built, with skin burned almost toblackness

by exposure. A woman who looked at her with eyes that were startlingly light in her dark face ...

Her own eyes. Her own face.

She cried out and struggled to her feet, trembling, staggering, and her body felt strange to her. She looked down upon the strangeness of another woman's limbs, the alien shaping of flesh and sinew upon alien bones.

The face of the dark giant who lay upon the coral mocked her. It watched, but did not see. The eyes were blank, empty, without soul or intelligence.

The mind of Erica Joan Stark fought, in its alien prison, for sanity.

Berild's voice spoke to her. His hand was on her shoulder

Kynyn's shoulder ...

'All is well, wild woman. Do not fear. Kynyn's mind is in your body, still sleeping at my command. And you are Kynyn now.' It was not an easy thing to accept, but she knew that it was so, and she knew that she had wished it to be so. It was easier to be calm after she turned her back on the other.

Berild took her in his arms and held her until she had stopped shuddering, oddly like a father with a frightened child. Then he kissed her, smiling, and said,

The first time is hard. I can remember – and that was very long ago.' He shook her gently. 'Now come. We'll take your body to a place of safety. And then I must tell you all of Kynyn's plans for those outside.'

He 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 ii was left, locked safely in.

'Only I can give it back to you,' said Berild softly. 'Remember that.'

Stark said, 'I will remember.'

She went with Berild to Kynyn's quarters in the palace. She sat among Kynyn's possessions, clothed in Kynyn's flesh, and learned how Kynyn's mind had planned to loose a red tide upon the peaceful cities of the Border.

Only a small part of her mind was attentive to this. The rest of it was concerned with the redness of Berild's hair and the warmth of his 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. He had told her much, but not the things Fian had told her, of the secret treachery he had planned with Delgauna. He helped Stark to clothe Kynyn's body in the harness of war, with the Iongsword and the shield and the shining spear. Then he set his lips to her so that her borrowed heart threatened to choke her with its pounding, and his eyes were wondrously bright and beautiful.

'It is time,' he whispered.

He walked beside her, as she had seen his beside Kynyn in Valkis, stepping like a king.

They came out of the palace, onto the steps where Luhara 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 Kynyn's beast. It sensed the wrongness in her, hissing and rearing, but she held it down, and imperiously raised her hand.

Throbbing drums and skirling pipes, tossing flames where the link-boys ran with the torches, a clash of metal and a cheer, and Kynyn of Shun rode down through the streets of Sinharat to the coral cliffs, with the red-haired man at her side.

They were waiting.

The women of Kesh and the women of Shun were gathered below cliffs, waiting. Stark led the way, as Berild had told her to, a ledge of coral above them. Delgauna was there, with the outlanders and a handful of Valkisians. She looked tired and

tempered. Stark knew that she 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 taunt expectant hush.

I here was no fear in Stark now. She was past that. Fear was too small an emotion for what was about to be.

She saw Delgauna's golden eyes, hot with a cruel excitement. She saw Berild's secret triumph in his smile. She looked down upon the warriors, and let the magnificent voice of Kynyn ring out across the soundless air.

'There will be no war,' she said. 'You have been betrayed.'

In the moment that was left to her, she confessed the lie of the Rama crowns. And then Berild, who was behind her now, had moved like a red-haired fury to drive his dagger into her heart.

In her own body, Stark might have escaped the blow. But the reflexes of Kynyn were not as hers. They were swift enough to postpone death – the blade bit deep, but not where Berild had wished it. She turned and caught his by the wrists, and said to Delgauna, 'She has betrayed you, too. Freka lies in a coral pit – and I am not Kynyn.'

Berild tore away from her. He spurred his beast toward the Valkisian. He would have broken past her, through the escort, and up the cliffs to safety in the tunnels under Sinharat. But Delgauna was too quick.

One hand caught in the masses of his hair. He was dragged screaming from the saddle, and even then his screams were not of fear, but of fury. He clawed at Delgauna, and she fell with his 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.

Delgauna's wiry body arched. She flung the man over the ledge, and what happened to his after that Stark did not see, nor wish to see.

She was shouting again to the barbarians, the tale of Delgauna's treachery.

Behind her on the ledge there was turmoil where Delgauna ran on foot between the beasts, and the outlanders made their try for safety. Below her 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 Kynyn's blood inside her, where Berild's dagger stood out from her back.

They had headed Delgauna away from the path up the cliff. The two loose mounts had been caught and held. They had tried to catch Delgauna, but she was light and fast and slipped away from them. Now she broke back, toward Kynyn's great beast.

Knock the dying woman from the saddle, charge through the milling chieftains, who were hampered by their own numbers in that narrow space ...

She leaped. And the arms of Kynyn, driven by the will of Erica Joan Stark, encircled her and held her and would not let her go.

The two women crashed to the ledge. Stark let out one harsh cry of agony, and then was still, her hands locked around the Valkisian's throat, her eyes intent and strange.

Women came up, and she gasped, 'He is mine,' and they let her be.

Delgauna did not die easily. She managed to get her 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. She was living again the dream she 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 her life, and she 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. She fell forward, over her prey.

Below, on the sand, Berild lay, and him outspread hair was as red as blood in the fiery dawn.

The women of Kesh and the women 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 boy ran down the path to the ledge.

She bent over the body of Kynyn, pressing his hand to its heart. Tears ran down and mingled with the blood.

A low, faint moan came from the woman's lips. Weeping like a bulH, Fian drew a tiny vial from his girdle and poured three drops of pale liquid on the unresponsive tongue.

12

She had come a long way. She had been down in the deep black valleys of the Place of Darkness, and the iron frost was in her bones. She had climbed the bitter mountains where no creature of the Twilight Belt might go and live.

There was light, now. She had been lost and wandering, but she had won back to the light. Her tribe, her people would be waiting for her. But she knew that she would never see them.

She remembered, then, with the old terrible loneliness, that they were not truly her people. They had raised her, but they were not of her blood.

And she 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 her in a cage.

With a start of terror, she thought she was again in that cage, with the leering smooth faces peering in at her. But in the blinding dazzle of light she could see no bars.

There was only one face. The anxious, pitying face of a boy.

Fian.

Her brain began to clear. Memory returned bit by bit, the fragments fitting themselves gradually into place.

Kynyn. Delgauna. Berild. Sinharat, the Ever-Living.

She remembered now with perfect clarity that she was dying, and it seemed a terrible thing to die in the body of another woman. For the first time, fully, she felt the separation from her own flesh. It seemed a blasphemous thing, more terrible than death.

Fian was weeping. He stroked her hair, and whispered, 'I am so glad. I was afraid – afraid you would never wake.'

She was touched, because she knew that he loved her and would be sad. She lifted her hand to touch his face, to comfort him.

She saw the fingers of that hand, dark against his cheek. Dark... Her own fingers. Her own hand.

She was not on the ledge. She was back in the coral crypt beneath the palace. The light that had dazzled her eyes was not the sun, but only the flare of torches.

She sat up, her heart pounding wildly.

Kynyn of Shun lay beside her on the coral. She was quite dead, her head encircled by a crown of fire, her side open to the white bone where Delgauna's blade had struck.

The wound that Kynyn herself had never felt.

The golden coffer was open. The second crown lay near Fian, with the rod beside it.

Stark looked at him, deep into his eyes. Very softly she said, 'I would not have dreamed it.'

'You will understand, now – many things,' he said. 'And I was glad of my power today, because I could truly give you life!' He rose, and she saw that he was very tired. His voicemwas 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 Delgauna, each alone, I might have destroyed, but I could not destroy both of them. And if I had, there was still Kynyn. You did what I could not, Erica Joan Stark.'

'Why were you against them, Fian? How were you proof against the poison that made them what they were?'

He answered angrily, 'Because I am weary of evil, of scheming for power and shedding the blood of women as though they were sheep! I am not better than Berild was. I, too, have lived a long time, line, and my hands are not clean. But perhaps, by what you helped me do, I have made up a little for my sins.'

He paused, his thoughts turned darkly inward, and it was strange to see the shadow of age touching his sweet young face. Then he said, very slowly, like an old, old man 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 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.

'Ist is a wicked thing!' he cried suddenly. 'Against nature and the gods, and it has never brought anything but evil!' He caught up the rod and held it in his hands.

'This is the last,' he 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 Delgauna. Now only this, and I, are left.'

Quite suddenly, he flung the rod against the coral, and it broke iemp a cloudy flame and a tinkling of crystal shards. Then, one by one, he broke the crowns.

He stood still for a long moment. Then he whispered, 'Now only I am left.'

Again there was silence, and Stark was shaken by the magnitude of the thing that he had done. His slim boy's body somehow took on the stature of a god.

After a while she went to his and said awkwardly, 'I have not thanked you, Fian. You brought me here, you saved me ...' 'Kiss me once , then,' he answered, and raised his lips to hers.

'For I love you, Erica Joan Stark – and that is the pity of it. Because I am not for you, nor for any woman.'

She kissed him, very tenderly, and there was the bitter taste of tears on his soft lips.

'Now come,' he whispered, and took her hand.

He led her 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 her, supplied with food and water. Fian asked her where she wished to go, and pointed the way to Tarak.

'And you?' she asked. 'Where will you go, little one?'

'I have not thought.' He lifted his head, and the wind played with his dark hair. He did not smile, and yet suddenly Stark knew that he was happy.

'I am free of a great burden,' he 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.'

She mounted, and he looked up at her, with a look that wrung her heart although it was not sad.

'Go now,' he said, 'and the gods go with you.'

'And with you.' She bent and kissed his once again, and then rode away, down to the coral cliffs.

Far out on the desert she turned and looked back, once, at the white towers of Sinharat rising against the larger moon.

THE END

Artwork by Robert Rizzato

 http://www.flickr.com/photos/rizzato/3304635640/in/faves-jekkarapress/

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Jekkara Press

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Also by Jekkara press

The Adventures of Bulays and Ghaavn currently include:

01 Blood Demons of Titan - Tara Loughead

The warriors Bulays and Ghaavn hunt demons and their master through the dim and dusty streets of Barnes, on Titan. Can they stop him before he completes a devastating ritual?

02 Death Queen of Neptune - Tara Loughead

Bulays and Ghaavn are called in to investigate why a frontier base on Neptune has gone silent. Ice monsters and an ancient, beautiful evil await.

03 She Devils of Europa - Tara Loughead

One of the richest women in the Solar System asks Bulays and Ghaavn for help in stopping a series of thefts. There is a mystery to solve at the most

expensive resort in existence, The Europa. Larceny, magic and dancing await, in an all expenses paid evening.

04 Shadow Emperor of Phobos: The Martian Moon War Part 1 - Tara Loughead

Bulays and Ghaavn try and stop a underworld shooting war. First they must get past a Martian Shadowcat, employ surprising combat techniques, and try and reason with Ghaavn's criminal mentor.

05 Desert Empress of Deimos: The Martian Moon War Part 2 - Tara Loughead

Bulays and Ghaavn are caught in the middle of a crime family war. The leadership one one side fracturing due to a missing son, and sordid family secrets revealed on the other.

The Gender Switch Adventures

The Devil In Iron, Respawned [Conyn the Barbarian] - Roberta E Howard

Any resemblance to Robert E. Howard's Conan is completely intentional. A resurrected demon menaces Conyn on an island fortress, along with other monsters.

The Pool of the Black One, Reswum [Conyn the Barbarian] - Roberta E Howard

Any resemblance to Robert E. Howard's Conan is completely intentional. Conyn, a pirate, puts herself in charge and investigates a strange island with mystic waters.

Jewels of Gwahlur, Reboxed [Conyn the Barbarian] - Roberta E. Howard

Any resemblance to Robert E. Howard's Conan is completely intentional. Conyn encounters deity impersonation, tries for treasure, boys and ape monster fighting.

Queen of the Black Coast, Recrowned [Conyn the Barbarian] - Roberta E. Howard

Conyn survives the slaughter of her pirate colleagues and finds a man to fire her blood. Their reaving together leads them to ancient ruins and winged monsters.

Red Nails, Polished [Conyn the Barbarian] - Roberta E. Howard

Conyn finally catches Valerian of the Red Brotherhood, and the pair end up fighting for their lives against a sorcerous death cult in an ancient city.

Beyond the Black River, Recrossed [Conyn the Barbarian] by Roberta E. Howard

Conyn signs up as a scout in Pictish territory, and gets involved with his partner in a border war against the wizard Zogara Sag and her cult of followers.

Queen of the Martian Catacombs Engraved (Erica Joan Stark) - Lee Brackett

Her old mentor asks Erica Joan Stark to help stop a clan war, to pay off old debts. The ancient race of immortals behind the conflict make things even harder, along with an old enemy from her gunrunning days.

Stand Alone

Undead Dining - Tara Loughead

A very short horror story about a very different restaurant.

Coming Soon

The Adventures of Bulays and Ghaavn

06 Heart Breakers of Hyperion – Tara Loughead

The Gender Switch Adventures

Black Male Amazon of Mars (Erica Joan Stark) - Lee Brackett

Song In A Minor Key, Retuned (Norawest Smith) - Cathan L. Moore

The Tree of Life, Revisited (Norawest Smith) - Cathan L. Moore

The Valor of Cappea Verra, Recapped (Cappea Verra) - Poula Anderson

