'Stand up, Outlander,' he said. 'Stand up and face the steel. After that you'll sleep in a coral pit, and not even the worms will find you.'
'Beast of Shanga!' Stark said contemptuously, and set his back against the wall, to give himself all the slack of the chain.
He saw the bright steel glimmer in the air, up and down again, but when the blow fell he had leaped aside, and the point struck ringing against the stone. Stark darted in to grapple.
His fingers slipped on hard muscle, and Freka wrenched away. He was a fighting man, and no weakling. The iron collar dug painfully into the Earthman's throat and the heavy chain threw him backward. Freka laughed, deep in his chest. The sword glinted hungrily.
Then, as though she had taken shape suddenly from the shadows, Fianna was in the doorway. The little gun in her hand made a hissing spurt of flame. Freka screamed once, and fell. He did not move again.
'The swine,' Fianna said, without emotion. 'Delgaun ordered him to wait, until it was sure that Kynon would not come down to talk to you. Then the story was to be that you had escaped somehow, with Berild's aid.'
She stepped over the body and unlocked the iron collar with a key she took from her girdle.
Stark took her slender shoulders gently between his hands. 'Are you a witch-girl, that you know all things and always come when I need you?'
She gave him a deep, strange look. In the dusk, her proud young face was unfamiliar, touched with something fey and sad. He wished that he could see her eyes more clearly.
'I know all things because I must,' she told him wearily. 'And I think that you are my only hope — perhaps the only hope of Mars.'
He drew her to him, and kissed her, and stroked her dark head. 'You're too young to concern yourself with the destinies of worlds.'
He felt her tremble. 'The youth of the body is only illusion, when the mind is old.'
'And is yours old, little one?'
'Old,' she whispered. 'As old as Berild's.'
He felt sher tears warm against his skin, and she was like a child in her arms.
'Then you know about her,' said Stark.
He paused. 'And Delgaun?'
'Delgaun also.'
'I thought so,' Stark said. He nodded, scowling at the barred moonlight in the well. 'There are things I must know, myself but we'd best get out of here. Did Berild send you?'
'Yes — as soon as she could get the key from Kynon. She is waiting for you.' She stirred Freka's body with her foot. 'Bring that. hat. We'll hide it in the pit he meant for you.'
Stark heaved the body over his shoulder and followed the girl through a twisting maze of corridors, some pitch dark, some feebly lighted by the moons. Fianna moved as surely as though she were in the main square at high noon. There was the silence of death in these cold tunnels, and the dry faint smell of eternity.
At length Fianna whispered. 'Here. Be careful.'
She put out a hand to guide him, but Stark's eyes were like a cat's in the dark. He made out a space where the rock with which the ancient builders had faced these subterranean ways gave place to the original coral.
Ragged black mouths opened in the coral, entrances to some unguessed catacombs beneath. Stark consigned Freka to the nearest pit, and then reluctantly threw his sword in after him.
'You won't need it,' Fianna told him, 'and besides, it would be recognised. This will be a bitter night enough, without rousing the men of Shun over Freka's death.'
Stark listened to the distant sliding echoes from the pit, and shivered. He had so nearly finished there himself. He was glad to follow Fianna away from that place of darkness and silent death.
He stopped her in a place where a bar of moonlight came splashing through a great crack in the tunnel roof.
'Now,' he said, 'we will talk.'
She nodded. 'Yes. The time has come for that.'
'There are lies everywhere,' said Stark. 'I am tangled up in lies. You know the truth that is behind this war of Kynon's. Tell me.'
'Kynon's truth is simple,' she answered, speaking slowly, choosing her words. 'He wants land and power, conquest. He will pour out the blood of his people for that, and after that he plans to use the men of the Low-Canals under Delgaun to keep the tribesmen in line. It may be true, as he said, that they would be satisfied with grazing land and water — but they would lose their freedom, and their pride, and I think he has judged them wrongly. I think they would revolt.'
She looked up at Stark. 'He planned to use your knowledge, and then destroy you if you became troublesome.'
'I guessed that. What about the others?'
'The outlanders? Use them, keep them as subordinates, or pay them off. Kill them, if necessary.'
Now,' said Stark. 'What of Delgaun and Berild?'
Fianna said softly. 'Their truth, too, is simple. They took Kynon's idea of empire, and stretched it further. It was Delgaun's idea to bring the strangers in. They would use Kynon and the tribes until the victory was won. Then they would do away with Kynon and rule themselves — with the outlanders and their ships and their powerful weapons to oppress Low-Canaler and Drylander alike.
'That way, they could rape a world. More outland vultures would come, drawn by the smell of loot. The Martian men would fight as long as there was the hope of plunder — after that, they would be slaves to hold the empire. Their masters would grow fat on tribute from the City-States and from the men of Earth who have built here, or who wish to build. An evil plan — but profitable.'
Stark thought about Knighton and Walsh of Terra, Themis of Mercury, Arrod of Callisto Colony. He thought of others like them, and what they would do, with their talons hooked in the heart of Mars. He thought of Delgaun's yellow eyes.
He thought of Berild, and he was sick with loathing.
Fianna came close to him, speaking in a different tone that had care and anxiety only for him.
'I have told you this, because I know what Berild plans. Tonight - oh, tonight is a black and evil time, and death waits in Sinharat! It is very close to me, I know. And you must follow own heart, Eric John Stark. I cannot tell you more.'
He kissed her again, because she was sweet and very brave. Then she led him on through the dark labyrinth, to where Berild was waiting, with her dangerous beauty and all the evil of the ages in her soul.
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. Her wonderful hair was dressed and shining, and her body was clothed all in white, her arms and shoulders warm bronze from the kiss of the desert sun.
Kynon was there, also. He stood motionless and silent, and he did not so much as turn his head when Fianna and Stark came in. His eyes were wide open and blank as a blind man's.
'I have been waiting,' said Berild, 'and the time is short.'
She seemed angry and impatient, and Stark said, Freka is dead. It was necessary to hide his body.'
She nodded and turned to the girl. 'Go now, Fianna.'
Fianna bent her head and went away. She did not look at Stark. It was as though she had no interest in anything that happened.
Stark looked at Kynon, who had not moved or spoken.
'He is safe enough,' said Berild, answering Stark's unspoken question. 'I drugged his wine so that his mind was opened to mine, and he is my creature as long as I will it.'
Hypnosis, Stark thought. His nerves were beginning to do strange things. He wished desperately that he were back in the cell facing Freka's sword, which at least would deal with him openly and without guile or subterfuge.
Berild set her hands on Stark's shoulders, and smiled a
s she had done that night by the ancient well.
'I offer you three things tonight, wild man,' she said. Her eyes challenged him, and the scent of her hair was sweet and maddening.
'Your life — and power — and myself.'
Stark let his hands slip lightly down from her shoulders to her waist. 'And how will you do this thing?' he asked.
'Easily,' she said, and laughed. She was very proud, and sure of her strength, and glad to be alive. 'Oh, very easily. You guessed the truth about me — I am of the Twice Born, the Ramas. I hold the secret of the Sending-on of Minds, which this great ox Kynon pretended to have. I can give you life now — and forever. Remember, wild man — forever!'
He bent his dark face to hers, so that their lips touched, and murmured, 'Would I have you forever, Berild?'
'Until you tire of me — or I of you.' She kissed him, and then added mockingly, 'Delgaun has had me for a thousand years, and I am weary of him. So very weary!'
'A thousand years is a long time,' said Stark, 'and I am not Delgaun.'
'No. You're a beast, a savage, a most magnificent cold-eyed animal, and that is why I love you.' She touched the muscle of his breast, and then his throat, and added, 'It's a pity there will never be another body like this one. We must keep it as long as we can.'
'What is your plan?' Stark asked her.
'Simply this. I will place your mind in Kynon's body. You will be Kynon, with all his power. You will be able then to keep Delgaun in check — later, you can destroy him, but not until after the battle is won, for we need the men of Valkis and Jekkara. You can keep your own body safe from him, and at the worst, if by some chance he should succeed in slaying the man he believes to be you, you will still be alive.'
'And after the battle,' said Stark softly. 'What then, Berild?'
'We will rule together.' She held his palms against hers. 'You have strong hands, wild man. Would you not like to hold a world between them — and me?'
She looked up at him, her eyes suddenly shrewd and probing. Or do you still believe the nonsense you talked to Kynon, about the tribes?'
Stark smiled. 'It's easy to have principles when there's no gain involved. No. I am as my name says — a man without a tribe. I have no loyalties. And if I had, would I remember them now?'
He held her, as she had said, between his hands, and they were very strong.
But even then, Berild could warn him.
'Keep faith with me, then! My wisdom is greater than yours, and I have powers you don't dream of. What I give, I can take away.'
For answer, Stark silenced her mouth with his own.
When she drew away, she said rather breathlessly, 'Let us hurry. The tribes are gathered, and Kynon was to have given the signal for war at dawn. There is much I must teach you between now and then.'
She paused with her hand on the lid of the golden coffer. 'This is a secret place,' she said quietly. 'Since before the ocean died, it has been secret. Not even Kynon knew of it. I think only Delgaun and I, the last of the Twice-Born, knew — and now you.'
'What about Fianna?'
Berild shrugged. 'She is only my servant. To her, this is only a little cavern where I keep my private wealth.'
She pressed a series of patterned bosses in intricate sequence, and there was the sharp click of an opening lock. A shiver ran up along Stark's spine. The beast in him longed to run, to be away from this whole business that smelled of evil. But the man in him knelt at Berild's wish, and waited, and did not flinch when the blank-eyed Kynon came like a moving corpse beside him.
Berild raised the golden lid. And there was a great silence.
On the slave block of Valkis, Kynon had brought forth two crowns of shining crystal and a rod of flame. As glass is to diamond, as the pallid moon to the light of the sun, were those things to the reality.
In her two hands Berild held the ancient crowns of the Ramas, the givers of life. Twin circlets of glorious fire, dimming the shallow glare of the torches, putting a nimbus of light around the white-clad woman so that she was like a goddess walking in a cloud of stars. Stark's whole being contracted to a point of icy pain at the beauty and the wonder and the terror of them.
She set one crown on Kynon's head, and even the drugged automaton shivered and sighed at its touch.
Stark's mind veered away from the incredible thing that was about to happen. It spoke words to him, hurried desperate words of sanity, about the electrical patterns of the mind, and the sensitivity of crystals, and conductors, and electro-magnetic impulses. But that was only the top of his brain. At base it was still the brain of N'Chaka that believed in gods and demons and all the sorceries of darkness. Only pride kept him from cowering abjectly at Berild's feet.
She stood above him, a creature of dreams in the unearthly light. She smiled and whispered, 'Do not fear,' — and she placed the second crown upon his head.
A strange, shuddering fire swept through him. It was as though some chip of the primal heart of all creation had been set by an unguessed magic into the cells of the crystal. The force that shaped the universe and scattered forth the stars, and set the great suns to spinning. There was something awesome about it, something almost holy.
And yet he was afraid. Most shockingly afraid.
His brain was set free, in some strange fashion. The walls of his skull vanished. His mind floated in a dim vastness. It was like a tiny sun, glowing, spinning, swelling ...
Berild lifted a crystal rod from the coffer, a wand of sorcerous fire. And now Stark's thoughts had lost all track of science. A cloud of misty darkness flowed around him, thickened ...
A great leaping flare of light, a distant echo of a cry that he did not recognise as his own, and then ...
Nothing.
11
He was lying on his face, his cheek pressed against the cool coral. He opened his eyes, his mind groping for the shreds of some remembered terror. He saw, vaguely at first and then with terrible clarity as his vision became clear, a man lying close beside him.
A tall man, very strongly built, with skin burned almost toblackness
by exposure. A man who looked at him with eyes that were startlingly light in his dark face ...
His own eyes. His own face.
He cried out and struggled to his feet, trembling, staggering, and his body felt strange to him. He looked down upon the strangeness of another man's limbs, the alien shaping of flesh and sinew upon alien bones.
The face of the dark giant who lay upon the coral mocked him. It watched, but did not see. The eyes were blank, empty, without soul or intelligence.
The mind of Eric John Stark fought, in its alien prison, for sanity.
Berild's voice spoke to him. Her hand was on his shoulder
Kynon's shoulder ...
'All is well, wild man. Do not fear. Kynon's mind is in your body, still sleeping at my command. And you are Kynon now.' It was not an easy thing to accept, but he knew that it was so, and he knew that he had wished it to be so. It was easier to be calm after he turned his back on the other.
Berild took him in her arms and held him until he had stopped shuddering, oddly like a mother with a frightened child. Then she kissed him, smiling, and said,
The first time is hard. I can remember — and that was very long ago.' She shook him gently. 'Now come. We'll take your body to a place of safety. And then I must tell you all of Kynon's plans for those outside.'
She spoke to the thing that lay upon the coral, saying, 'Get up,' and it rose obediently and followed where Berild led, to a tiny barred niche in a side passage. It made no protest when ii was left, locked safely in.
'Only I can give it back to you,' said Berild softly. 'Remember that.'
Stark said, 'I will remember.'
He went with Berild to Kynon's quarters in the palace. He sat among Kynon's possessions, clothed in Kynon's flesh, and learned how Kynon's mind had planned to loose a red tide upon the peaceful cities of the Border.
Only a small part of his mind was
attentive to this. The rest of it was concerned with the redness of Berild's hair and the warmth of her lips, and with the heady knowledge that it was possible to be alive and young forever.
Never to lose the pride of strength, never to know the dimming sight and failing mind of age. To go on, like a child in an endless playground, with no fear of tomorrow.
It was nearly dawn.
Berild rose. She had told him much, but not the things Fianna had told him, of the secret treachery she had planned with Delgaun. She helped Stark to clothe Kynon's body in the harness of war, with the Iongsword and the shield and the shining spear. Then she set her lips to his so that his borrowed heart threatened to choke him with its pounding, and her eyes were wondrously bright and beautiful.
'It is time,' she whispered.
She walked beside him, as he had seen her beside Kynon in Valkis, stepping like a queen.
They came out of the palace, onto the steps where Luhar had died. There were beasts waiting, trapped for war, and an escort of tall chiefs, with pipers and drummers and link-boys to light the way.
Stark mounted Kynon's beast. It sensed the wrongness in him, hissing and rearing, but he held it down, and imperiously raised his hand.
Throbbing drums and skirling pipes, tossing flames where the link-boys ran with the torches, a clash of metal and a cheer, and Kynon of Shun rode down through the streets of Sinharat to the coral cliffs, with the red-haired woman at his side.
They were waiting.
The men of Kesh and the men of Shun were gathered below cliffs, waiting. Stark led the way, as Berild had told him to, a ledge of coral above them. Delgaun was there, with the outlanders and a handful of Valkisians. He looked tired and
tempered. Stark knew that he had been busy for hours with last-minute preparations.
The first pale rays of dawn broke across the desert. A vast ringing cry went up from the gathered armies. After that there was, silence, a taunt expectant hush.
I here was no fear in Stark now. He was past that. Fear was too small an emotion for what was about to be.
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