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4

The Antarean was tall, and he moved with a jaunty, loose-limbed stride like a lion carelessly at ease. His skin was a clear golden color, drawn smoothly over strong, high-arching bones. His eyes were a darker gold, and the pupils were slitted. His close-curled hair was like a cap, snug against his broad skull. He wore a very rich tunic of smoke-gray silken stuff over tight black trousers. In his right hand he carried a whip with a long, thin lash. At the end of the lash, jingling lightly together, were several small metallic objects like the jointed tails of scorpions.

"In spite of its unpleasant appearance," said Penkawr-Che, "this upland does support something of a population. The tenacity of life is always amazing. One wonders. What does the yellow bird live on, apart from odd finds like Ashton? Why does it want to live at all, in these surroundings? I can't tell you. But it will be back, probably with its mate. In the meantime, you two have other problems."

He looked from Stark to Ashton, and back again to Stark.

"You will answer my questions this time, unless for some reason you are more attached to the Children of Skaith, who tried to kill you, than you are to this man, who fostered you."

Almost without looking, he flicked the scorpion-tail lash of the whip at Ashton's body. There came a short sharp cry, quickly silenced.

"Ashton is more communicative than you are under drugs. I already know enough from him to find the Witchfires, since he actually saw them when he was a prisoner in the north. But he was never inside the House of the Mother and so was only able to repeat to me what you had told him. Now, is it true that this vast complex of caverns under the Witchfires is a storehouse for artifacts from the past of this planet?"

"That is true," said Stark. "The Children have a passion for history. I suppose it has kept them from going completely mad since they left the outer world behind them." He looked at Penkawr-Che through the bars, then at Ashton's bleeding body pendant from the tree. "You could fill the holds of three ships, and three again, with the things in those caverns; and each piece would be worth a fortune in the collectors' market."

"So I thought," said Penkawr-Che. "Describe to me the entrance to the caverns from the pass of the Witchfires, and the defenses there. Describe the North Gate, by which you escaped. Tell me how many men this Kell à Marg, Skaith-Daughter, can set against me, how they're armed, what kind of fighters they are."

Stark said, "Something for nothing is no bargain, Penkawr-Che. And I don't talk well in cages."

Again the lash flicked out.

"Do you wish to torture Ashton, or do you wish to get the information?" Stark asked.

Penkawr-Che considered, drawing the long, thin lash through his fingers. "Supposing I let you out of the cage. What then?"

"Ashton comes down from there."

"Then what?"

"Let us go that far," said Stark, "and then see."

Penkawr-Che laughed. He clapped his hands. Four men emerged from the litter of the semi-camp which had sprouted overnight beside the base of the ship. At Penkawr-Che's order, they tailed onto the rope and lowered Ashton to the ground, unbinding him and helping him to stand.

"There is half your bargain," said Penkawr-Che.

Each of the four men had a stunner bolstered at his belt. Two of them, in addition, carried long-range weapons slung across their backs.

Old Sun slid wearily toward the horizon. Shadows flowed together across the heath.

Stark shrugged. "The northern gate opens onto the Plain of Worldheart. There is a guardroom immediately inside, and beyond that a corridor protected by slabs of stone which can be let down to form a series of barriers. The gate itself is a slab of stone which moves on pivots. You might search for a hundred years along that face of the Witchfires and never find it." He smiled at Penkawr-Che. "There is a third of your bargain."

Penkawr-Che said, "Continue."

"Not till I'm free of these bars."

The lash flicked. Ashton's eyes filled with tears, but he did not cry out.

Stark said brutally, "Flay him if you will. Until I'm free of this cage, you get nothing more."

In a stiff, flat voice Ashton said, "If you push him too far, Penkawr-Che, you will get nothing at any time. He reverts easily."

Penkawr-Che studied Stark. He saw a man, big and dark and powerful, scarred with old battles. A mercenary, with a life spent in the small primitive wars of small peoples on remote worlds. A dangerous man. This, Penkawr-Che knew and understood. But there was something about the eyes, disconcertingly light and clear. They had a kind of blaze in them, something at once innocent and deadly—a beast's eyes, startling to see in a human face.

Ashton added, "He cannot endure being caged."

Penkawr-Che spoke to one of the men, who went away and presently returned with a cutting torch. Removing one bar, he created a gap through which Stark might leave the cage but not in any swift dramatic leap. As he levered himself out, the men stood with their stunners in their hands, watching.

"Very well," said Penkawr-Che. "Now you are free."

Stark drew a long breath and shivered slightly, as an animal twitches its skin. He stood straight beside the cage.

"In the pass of the Witchfires," he said, "just below the crest, there is a rock formation called the Leaning Man. A gateway into the caverns lies close beneath him. It, too, is a pivoted slab of stone. Inside is a large cavern where the Harsenyi nomads come to trade with the Children. A second door leads into the House of the Mother. Beyond this door is a long corridor, guarded by barriers as the North Gate is guarded, but by more of them—and stronger. No invader has ever breached those defenses."

"I have explosives."

"If you use them, the passage will be blocked by its own collapse."

"You give me small comfort," said Penkawr-Che. "What of the fighting men?"

"Both sexes bear arms." Stark was not sure of that, but no matter. "There will be four thousand at least, perhaps five or six. I can only make a guess. During most of the short time I was there, I was lost and wandering in total darkness. Much of the Mother's House has been abandoned, and there are obviously fewer of the Children than when it was constructed. But they are by no means extinct. They have no modern weapons, but they are stout fighters with what they have." Actually, he knew that they were not. "More important, they'll have the advantage of the ground. You'd have to take the chambers one by one, and you'd never come to the end of them."

"I have lasers."

"They will hide from them. The place is a maze. Even if you were able to force an entrance, they could keep you surrounded, attack unseen from every direction, pick you off one at a time. You would not have enough replacements."

Penkawr-Che frowned, drawing the lash again and again through his fingers.

Rusty twilight crept over the heath. Lights began to come on in the camp.

Penkawr-Che flicked the lash suddenly to draw blood from Stark's shoulder. "Your knowledge has proven to be of no value after all. We've both wasted our time." He turned, impatiently, to speak to his men.

"Wait," said Stark.

Penkawr-Che looked at him, squinting in the dusk. "Why should I wait?"

"Because I know a way into the House of Skaith-Mother that even her Children have forgotten."

"Ah!" said Penkawr-Che. "And how would you have happened to find that on your one brief visit, during most of which you wandered in the dark?"

"In the midst of darkness," Stark said, "I saw light. I will sell you this information."

"At what price?"

"Freedom."

Penkawr-Che's face was a mask, dim and obscure. After a while, so that he would not seem to be too eager, he nodded. "You're worth nothing to me dead. If I'm satisfied with your information, I'll take you and Ashton to wherever you wish, within reason—on Skaith, of course—and release you there."

"No," said Stark. "Release us here and now."

"It has to be my way."

"You'll get what you want my way or not at all. Think, Penkawr-Che. All those caverns crammed with treasures, and nothing to stop you—not a single barrier, not a single warrior with a spear. If you intend to let us go, what difference does it make to you where or how?"

"The heath is not a friendly-seeming place."

Stark laughed.

"All right," Penkawr-Che said impatiently. "If I'm satisfied, you may go free here and now."

"Good. I want clothing and weapons, and something for Ashton's wounds."

Penkawr-Che glowered, but he moved apart with one of his men, who presently hurried away.

The man returned quickly with a battery-powered lamp that he set on a packing case. Stark blessed it silently but tried not to look at it. The heath was quite dark now and would remain so until the first of the Three Ladies rose, perhaps a space of thirty minutes.

Ashton stood quietly. The harsh glare accentuated the leanness of his body, his bones seeming more prominent, his corded muscles more like wire ropes. Blood trickled in dark streams on the whiteness of his skin. He, too, had averted his face from the lamp. But he watched Stark.

Presently other men came with clothing. One of them treated Ashton with rough efficiency from a first-aid kit and then dabbed at the cut on Stark's shoulder. The two men dressed themselves in trousers and tunics and soft boots; the tunics were pale in color, and Stark was sorry for that.

"The weapons?"

Penkawr-Che shook his head. "Later, when I've heard what you have to say."

Stark had expected this. "All right," he said, "but Ashton goes now."

Penkawr-Che stared at him. "Why?"

"Why not, unless you're lying to me? Let's just call it a token of your good faith."

Penkawr-Che swore, but he nodded his head at Ashton. "Go, then."

He was confident. He held all the winning cards. He felt that he could afford to humor Stark. Besides, Ashton could not go far.

Ashton hesitated, then went away, out onto the dark heath.

Penkawr-Che said, "Talk."

Stark never lost sight of Ashton's faintly glimmering tunic.

"As I said, the Children are not as numerous as they were in the beginning. They are a controlled mutation with no choice but to interbreed. Much of the Great House has been abandoned for generations, and I wandered in the black dark there for days, trying to find a way out."

"And then you saw the light."

"Yes. It came through an opening in the rock. There was a balcony at the opening, high up on the cliff. A lookout post, I imagine. Probably there are others. I was not able to climb down from it, so it did not help me to escape. But it's a doorway into the catacombs, unguarded, forgotten—"

"Inaccessible?"

"To any enemy that the Children were aware of when they built it. Not to you. Hoppers could ferry men up there. You could put an army inside with not a single blow struck. You might even manage to fill all your holds before the Children even knew what you were about."

Penkawr-Che looked at Stark narrow-eyed, as if he were trying to pierce his brain and pick out the truth.

"How would I find this balcony?"

"Bring me something to draw on. I'll make you a map."

Out on the heath, Ashton had reached a clump of thorn. He paused, looking back.

A sheet of thin plastic and a stylus were brought to Stark. He put the plastic on the packing case, beside the lamp. Penkawr-Che leaned over to watch. The four men stood around at a little distance, their stunners ready. Ashton meanwhile blended imperceptibly into the shadows of the thorn-trees and disappeared.

"See here," said Stark. "Here is the north face of the Witchfire, here the Plain of Worldheart, here the range of the Bleak Mountains, the Thermal Pits, the Citadel—what's left of it. Over here, to the west, the Harsenyi road that led to their camp. That is what I saw from the balcony. I took rough bearings."

"Which you were able to do without instruments."

"I'm a mercenary by trade, you know that. I have a trained eye." He held the stylus, rolling it between his fingers. "I can pinpoint the area for you so that your search will not take you more than half a day, using the hoppers."

"But," said Penkawr-Che, "at the moment you do not intend to do so."

"No. And if I do not give you the bearings, your search will take much more time. Longer, I think, than you will care to spend."

"You're a hard man to deal with, Stark. What is it you want now?"

"Tell your men to take their weapons and go away."

"That is quite impossible."

"I don't trust you. I don't want those men where they can drop me the moment I finish the map."

"You have my word that they won't." Penkawr-Che smiled. "But I don't trust you either, and I think if I sent my men away you'd be gone in an instant, without finishing the map. So I'll tell you what we'll do. In exactly one minute, I shall send men after Ashton; the stunners will put you down, here and now, and we'll begin this whole weary business over again." He pointed to a small array of weapons that had been placed on the ground at a safe distance. "You won't live long without those. Finish the map, pick them up, and walk away free."

Stark's fingers closed on the stylus until it seemed that it must snap. His head dropped forward and his eyes narrowed.

Penkawr-Che said, "It's Ashton who will suffer. Shall I give the order?"

Stark let out a harsh breath and bent over the map. Penkawr-Che smiled again, briefly. Imperceptibly, the men relaxed. They knew now what they were going to do.

"All right, damn you," Stark said, in a low and furious voice. "Look." Penkawr-Che looked, where Stark was pointing with the stylus. "The Citadel is a burned-out ruin, but you can find it behind the mists of the Thermal Pits. From the Citadel, so . . ." The stylus began a straight, sure line. Stark's left hand struck the heavy lamp and knocked it straight into Penkawr-Che's startled grasp. The golden man cried out with pain and dropped it from his seared hands.

Stark was already moving, so swiftly that the eye could scarcely follow him. Instead of going for the weapons, he flung himself directly at the man who stood nearest him. The man, watching Stark, had perforce been staring into the light, which was now on the ground, still shining though partly hidden by the case. During the split second in which his vision was attempting to deal with the sudden change, Stark slammed into him low across the body. The man went over, loosing off his stunner at the sky. Stark rushed off, a large animal running low in erratic leaps and swerves, into the coarse grass with the flower-eyes. An ordinary man, even a skillful one, could hardly have found cover there. But this was N'Chaka, who had found cover on naked rock when the four-pawed death came snuffling after him. Like the four-pawed death, he moved as he had done so many times before when he played at the game of survival, aping the pursuer-quarry, sliding flat and hugging the ground. The glare behind him wavered and flashed as the lamp was set up again, worse for the marksmen than no light at all. They were firing wild, in any case, having lost sight of him almost at once; they had placed too much confidence in their numbers and in the futility of any attempt to escape, basing their estimate on human reflexes as they knew them. Stark had gambled his reflexes against theirs, and for the moment he had won. He was quickly out of range of the stunners.

The long-range weapons now began to crack. Dirt spurted up in little fountains, some so close that he was pelted, others so distant that he knew the men were aiming systematically to cover a given area rather than to hit a specific target. Some of the fire went into the clump of thorn where Ashton had last been seen, but Stark knew that Ashton would not be there now.

In the shelter of a hollow, he stripped off the pale-colored tunic, rolled it small and stuck it in his belt. The light had steadied behind him. High up, the illumination was clear. At ground level, it was streaked and patched with the shadows thrown by each small inequality in the surface, so that the marksmen were firing into a distracting pattern of dark and bright. Stark kept as much as possible to the dark.

More weapons had joined the original two. In the intervals of firing he could hear a great deal of shouting. Then this faded and became distant, like the light, though the firing still kept up. When Stark was well past the clump of thorns and into honest night, he began to make a low hissing sound that was like the voice of the four-pawed death but cadenced as a recognition signal. He continued to make it until Ashton's voice spoke to him from the lip of a small gully.

Stark slid down into it.

Ashton had removed his own tunic and rubbed his pale skin with handfuls of soil. He had not forgotten the lessons of his active youth.

"That was the most beautiful sound I ever heard," he said, and put his hand briefly on Stark's shoulder. "Now what?"

"Go to ground," Stark said, and glanced at the sky. "We're about out of darkness."

They scrambled along the gully to where it opened onto more of the coarse grass and pallid, staring flowers. A thick clump of thorn stood at the mouth of the gully, but Stark kept on past it.

Ashton stopped abruptly. "Listen!"

From behind them, where the tall ship was, came the muffled throb and thump of motors waked to sudden life.

"Yes," said Stark. "The hoppers."

He ran on, as the first of the Three Ladies thrust the edge of her shining countenance gently above the horizon.

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