Enchantress of Venus Dispelled

by Lee Brackett

that these servants were tongueless—to prevent them from telling what they saw or heard in the castle, Treona said.

  The woman spun about and fled, down a long dim-lit hall. Stark ran her down without effort. She struck once with the barrel of her gun, and the woman fell and was still.

  Treona came up. Her face had a look almost of exaltation, a queer shining of the eyes that made Stark shiver. She led on, through a series of empty rooms, all somber black, and they met no one else for a while.

  She stopped at last before a small door of burnished gold. She looked at Stark once, and nodded, and thrust the panels open and stepped through.

  XII

  They stood inside the vast echoing hall that stretched away into darkness until it seemed there was no end to it. The cluster of silver lamps burned as before, and within their circle of radiance the Lhari started up from their places and stared at the strangers who had come in through their private door.

  Conda, and Areln with his hands idle in his lap. Bor, pummeling the little dragon to make it hiss and snap, laughing at its impotence. Varran, stroking the winged creature on his wrist, testing with his white finger the sharpness of its beak. And the old man, with a scrap of fat meat halfway to his mouth.

  They had stopped, frozen, in the midst of these actions. And Treona walked slowly into the light.

  'Do you know me?' she said.

  A strange shivering ran through them. Now, as before, the old man spoke first, his eyes glittering with a look as rapacious as his appetite.

  'You are Treona,' he said, and his whole vast body shook.

  The name went crying and whispering off around the dark walls. Treona! Treona! Treona! Conda leaped forward, touching her cousin's straight strong body with hands that trembled.

  'You have found it,' she said. 'The secret.'

  'Yes.' Treona lifted her silver head and laughed, a beautiful ringing bell-note that sang from the echoing corners. 'I found it, and it's gone, smashed, beyond your reach forever. Egila is dead, and the day of the Lhari is done.'

  There was a long, long silence, and then the old man whispered, 'You lie!'

  Treona turned to Stark.

  'Ask her, the stranger who came bearing doom upon her forehead. Ask her if I lie.'

  Conda's face became something less than human. She made a queer crazed sound and flung herself at Treona's throat.

  Bor screamed suddenly. She alone was not much concerned with the finding or the losing of the secret, and she alone seemed to realize the significance of Stark's presence. She screamed, looking at the big dark woman, and went rushing off down the hall, crying for the guard as she went, and the echoes roared and racketed. She fought open the great doors and ran out, and as she did so the sound of fighting came through from the compound.

  The slaves, with their swords and clubs, with their stones and shards of rock, had come over the wall from the cliffs.

  Stark had moved forward, but Treona did not need her help. She had got her hands around Conda's throat, and she was smiling. Stark did not disturb her.

  The old man was talking, cursing, commanding, choking on his own apoplectic breath. Areln began to laugh. He did not move, and his hands remained limp and open in his lap. He laughed and laughed, and Varran looked at Stark and hated her.

  'You're a fool, wild woman,' he said. 'You would not take what I offered you, so you shall have nothing—only death.'

  He slipped the hood from his creature and set it straight at Stark. Then he drew a knife from his girdle and plunged it into Treona's side.

  Treona reeled back. Her grip loosened and Conda tore away, half throttled, raging, her mouth flecked with foam. She drew her short sword and staggered in upon Treona.

  Furious wings beat and thundered around Stark's head, and talons were clawing for her eyes. She reached up with her left hand and caught the brute by one leg and held it. Not long, but long enough to get one clear shot at Conda that dropped her in her tracks. Then she snapped the falcon's neck.

  She flung the creature at Varran's feet, and picked up the gun again. The guards were rushing into the hall now at the lower end, and she began to fire at them.

  Treona was sitting on the floor. Blood was coming in a steady trickle from her side, but she had the shock-weapon in her hands, and she was still smiling.

  There was a great boiling roar of noise from outside. Women were fighting there, killing, dying, screaming their triumph or their pain. The echoes raged within the hall, and the noise of Stark's gun was like a hissing thunder. The guards, armed only with swords, went down like ripe wheat before the sickle, but there were many of them, too many for Stark and Treona to hold for long.

  The old man shrieked and shrieked, and was suddenly still.

  Helvi burst in through the press, with a knot of collared slaves. The fight dissolved into a whirling chaos. Stark threw her gun away. She was afraid now of hitting her own women. She caught up a sword from a fallen guard and began to hew her way to the barbarian.

  Suddenly Treona cried her name. She leaped aside, away from the woman she was fighting, and saw Varran fall with the dagger still in his hand. He had come up behind her to stab, and Treona had seen and pressed the trigger stud just in time.

  For the first time, there were tears in Treona's eyes.

  A sort of sickness came over Stark. There was something horrible in this spectacle of a family destroying itself. She was too much the savage to be sentimental over Varran, but all the same she could not bear to look at Treona for a while.

  Presently she found herself back to back with Helvi, and as they swung their swords—the shock-weapons had been discarded for the same reason as Stark's gun—Helvi panted, 'It has been a good fight, my brother! We cannot win, but we can have a good death, which is better than slavery!'

  It looked as though Helvi was right. The slaves, unfortunately, weakened by their long confinement, worn out by overwork, were being beaten back. The tide turned, and Stark was swept with it out into the compound, fighting stubbornly.

  The great gate stood open. Beyond it stood the people of Shuruun, watching, hanging back—as Treona had said, they would wait and see.

  In the forefront, leaning on her stick, stood Larrabee the Earthwoman.

  Stark cut her way free of the press. She leaped up onto the wall and stood there, breathing hard, sweating, bloody, with a dripping sword in her hand. She waved it, shouting down to the women of Shuruun.

  'What are you waiting for, you scuts, you men? The Lhari are dead, the Lost Ones are freed—must we of Earth do all your work for you?'

  And she looked straight at Larrabee.

  Larrabee stared back, her dark suffering eyes full of a bitter mirth. 'Oh, well,' she said in English. 'Why not?'

  She threw back her head and laughed, and the bitterness was gone. She voiced a high, shrill rebel yell and lifted her stick like a cudgel, limping toward the gate, and the women of Shuruun gave tongue and followed her.

  After that, it was soon over.

  They found Bor's body in the stable pens, where she had fled to hide when the fighting started. The dragons, maddened by the smell of the blood, had slain her very quickly.

  Helvi had come through alive, and Larrabee, who had kept herself carefully out of harm's way after she had started the women of Shurrun on their attack. Nearly half the slaves were dead, and the rest wounded. Of those who had served the Lhari, few were left.

  Stark went back into the great hall. She walked slowly, for she was very weary, and where she set her foot there was a bloody print, and her arms were red to the elbows, and her breast was splashed with the redness. Treona watched her come, and smiled, nodding.

  'It is as I said. And I have outlived them all.'

  Areln had stopped laughing at last. He had made no move to run away, and the tide of battle had rolled over him and drowned his unaware. The old man lay still, a mountain of inert flesh upon his bed. His hand still clutched a ripe fruit, clutched convulsively in the moment of death, the red juice drippi
ng through his fingers.

  'Now I am going, too,' said Treona, 'and I am well content. With me goes the last of our rotten blood, and Venus will be the cleaner for it. Bury my body deep, stranger with the fierce eyes. I would not have it looked on after this.'

  She sighed and fell forward.

  Bor's little dragon crept whimpering out from its hiding place under the old man's bed and scurried away down the hall, trailing its dragging rope.

  Stark leaned on the taffrail, watching the dark mass of Shuruun recede into the red mists.

  The decks were crowded with the outland slaves, going home. The Lhari were gone, the Lost Ones freed forever, and Shuruun was now only another port on the Red Sea. Its people would still be wolf's-heads and pirates, but that was natural and as it should be. The black evil was gone.

  Stark was glad to see the last of it. She would be glad also to see the last of the Red Sea.

  The off-shore wind sent the ship briskly down the gulf. Stark thought of Larrabee, left behind with her dreams of winter snows and city streets and men with dainty feet. It seemed that she had lived too long in Shuruun, and had lost the courage to leave it.

  'Poor Larrabee,' she said to Helvi, who was standing near her. 'She'll die in the mud, still cursing it.'

  Someone laughed behind her. She heard a limping step on the deck and turned to see Larrabee coming toward her.

  'Changed my mind at the last minute,' Larrabee said. I've been below, lest I should see my muddy brats and be tempted to change it again.' She leaned beside Stark, shaking her head. 'Ah,