Queen of the Martian Catacombs Engraved Read online

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!'

  Th
ey 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