by Lee Brackett
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 f
ree, 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.