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Across the glowing ice of the valley Stark went at a stumbling run thatgrew swifter and more sure as his cold-numbed body began to regain itsfunctions. And behind him, pouring out of the tower to watch, came theshining ones.
They followed after him, gliding lightly. He could sense theirexcitement, the cold, strange ecstasy of triumph. He knew that alreadythey were thinking of the great towers of stone rising again above theNorlands, the crystal cities still and beautiful under the ice, allvestige of the ugly citadels of man gone and forgotten.
The seven spoke once more, a warning.
"If you turn toward us with the sword, the woman and the man will die.And you will die as well. For neither you nor any other can now use thesword as a weapon of offense."
Stark ran on. He was thinking then only of Ciara, with thefrost-crystals gleaming on her marble flesh and her eyes full of mutetorment.
The cairn loomed up ahead, dark and high. It seemed to Stark that thebrooding figure of Ban Cruach watched him coming with those shadowedeyes beneath the rusty helm. The great sword blazed between those dead,frozen hands.
_The great sword blazed between those dead, frozenhands...._]
The ice-folk had slowed their forward rush. They stopped and waited,well back from the cairn.
Stark reached the edge of tumbled rock. He felt the first warm flare ofthe force-waves in his blood, and slowly the chill began to creep outfrom his bones. He climbed, scrambling upward over the rough stones ofthe cairn.
Abruptly, then, at Ban Cruach's feet, he slipped and fell. For a secondit seemed that he could not move.
His back was turned toward the ice-folk. His body was bent forward, andshielded so, his hands worked with feverish speed.
From his cloak he tore a strip of cloth. From the iron boss he took theglittering lens, the talisman of Ban Cruach. Stark laid the lens againsthis brow, and bound it on.
_The remembered shock, the flood and sweep of memories that were not hisown. The mind of Ban Cruach thundering its warning, its hard-wonknowledge of an ancient, epic war...._
He opened his own mind wide to receive those memories. Before he hadfought against them. Now he knew that they were his one small chance inthis swift gamble with death. Two things only of his own he kept firm inthat staggering tide of another man's memories. Two names--Ciara andBalin.
He rose up again. And now his face had a strange look, a curiousduality. The features had not changed, but somehow the lines of theflesh had altered subtly, so that it was almost as though the oldunconquerable king himself had risen again in battle.
He mounted the last step or two and stood before Ban Cruach. A shudderran through him, a sort of gathering and settling of the flesh, asthough Stark's being had accepted the stranger within it. His eyes, coldand pale as the very ice that sheathed the valley, burned with a cruellight.
He reached and took the sword, out of the frozen hands of Ban Cruach.
As though it were his own, he knew the secret of the metal rings thatbound its hilt, below the ball of crystal. The savage throb of theinvisible radiation beat in his quickening flesh. He was warm again, hisblood running swiftly, his muscles sure and strong. He touched the ringsand turned them.
The fan-shaped aura of force that had closed the Gates of Death narrowedin, and as it narrowed it leaped up from the blade of the sword in atongue of pale fire, faintly shimmering, made visible now by the fullfocus of its strength.
Stark felt the wave of horror bursting from the minds of the ice-folk asthey perceived what he had done. And he laughed.
His bitter laughter rang harsh across the valley as he turned to facethem, and he heard in his brain the shuddering, silent shriek that wentup from all that gathered company....
"_Ban Cruach! Ban Cruach has returned!_"
They had touched his mind. They knew.
* * * * *
He laughed again, and swept the sword in a flashing arc, and watched thelong bright blade of force strike out more terrible than steel, againstthe rainbow bodies of the shining ones.
They fell. Like flowers under a scythe they fell, and all across the icethe ones who were yet untouched turned about in their hundreds and fledback toward the tower.
Stark came leaping down the cairn, the talisman of Ban Cruach bound uponhis brow, the sword of Ban Cruach blazing in his hand.
He swung that awful blade as he ran. The force-beam that sprang from itcut through the press of creatures fleeing before him, hampered by theirown numbers as they crowded back through the archway.
He had only a few short seconds to do what he had to do.
Rushing with great strides across the ice, spurning the withered bodiesof the dead.... And then, from the glooming darkness that hovered aroundthe tower of stone, the black cold beam struck down.
Like a coiling whip it lashed him. The deadly numbness invaded the cellsof his flesh, ached in the marrow of his bones. The bright force of thesword battled the chill invaders, and a corrosive agony tore at Stark'sinner body where the antipathetic radiations waged war.
His steps faltered. He gave one hoarse cry of pain, and then his limbsfailed and he went heavily to his knees.
Instinct only made him cling to the sword. Waves of blinding anguishracked him. The coiling lash of darkness encircled him, and its touchwas the abysmal cold of outer space, striking deep into his heart.
_Hold the sword close, hold it closer, like a shield. The pain is great,but I will not die unless I drop the sword._
Ban Cruach the mighty had fought this fight before.
Stark raised the sword again, close against his body. The fierce pulseof its brightness drove back the cold. Not far, for the freezing touchwas very strong. But far enough so that he could rise again and staggeron.
The dark force of the tower writhed and licked about him. He could notescape it. He slashed it in a blind fury with the blazing sword, andwhere the forces met a flicker of lightning leaped in the air, but itwould not be beaten back.
He screamed at it, a raging cat-cry that was all Stark, all primitivefury at the necessity of pain. And he forced himself to run, to drag histortured body faster across the ice. _Because Ciara is dying, becausethe dark cold wants me to stop...._
The ice-folk jammed and surged against the archway, in a panic hurry totake refuge far below in their many-levelled city. He raged at them,too. They were part of the cold, part of the pain. Because of them Ciaraand Balin were dying. He sent the blade of force lancing among them, hishatred rising full tide to join the hatred of Ban Cruach that lodged inhis mind.
Stab and cut and slash with the long terrible beam of brightness. Theyfell and fell, the hideous shining folk, and Stark sent the light of BanCruach's weapon sweeping through the tower itself, through the openingsthat were like windows in the stone.
Again and again, stabbing through those open slits as he ran. Andsuddenly the dark beam of force ceased to move. He tore out of it, andit did not follow him, remaining stationary as though fastened to theice.
The battle of forces left his flesh. The pain was gone. He sped on tothe tower.
He was close now. The withered bodies lay in heaps before the arch. Thelast of the ice-folk had forced their way inside. Holding the swordlevel like a lance, Stark leaped in through the arch, into the tower.
* * * * *
The shining ones were dead where the destroying warmth had touchedthem. The flying spiral ribbons of ice were swept clean of them, thearching bridges and the galleries of that upper part of the tower.
They were dead along the ledge, under the control bank. They were deadacross the mechanism that spun the frosty doom around Ciara and Balin.The whirling disc still hummed.
Below, in that stupendous well, the crowding ice-folk made a seethingpattern of color on the narrow ways. But Stark turned his back on themand ran along the ledge, and in him was the heavy knowledge that he hadcome too late.
The frost had thickened around Ciar
a and Balin. It encrusted them likestiffened lace, and now their flesh was overlaid with a diamond shell ofice.
Surely they could not live!
He raised the sword to smite down at the whirring disc, to smash it, butthere was no need. When the full force of that concentrated beam struckit, meeting the focus of shadow that it held, there was a violent flareof light and a shattering of crystal. The mechanism was silent.
The glooming veil was gone from around the ice-shelled man and woman.Stark forgot the creatures in the shaft below him. He turned the blazingsword full upon Ciara and Balin.
It would not affect the thin covering of ice. If the woman and the manwere dead, it would not affect their flesh, any more than it had BanCruach's. But if they lived, if there was still a spark, a flickerbeneath that frozen mail, the radiation would touch their blood withwarmth, start again the pulse of life in their bodies.
He waited, watching Ciara's face. It was still as marble, and as white.
Something--instinct, or the warning mind of Ban Cruach that had learneda million years ago to beware the creatures of the ice--made him glancebehind him.
Stealthy, swift and silent, up the winding ways they came. They hadguessed that he had forgotten them in his anxiety. The sword was turnedaway from them now, and if they could take him from behind, stun himwith the chill force of the sceptre-like rods they carried....
He slashed them with the sword. He saw the flickering beam go down anddown the shaft, saw the bodies fall like drops of rain, rebounding hereand there from the flying spans and carrying the living with them.
He thought of the many levels of the city. He thought of all thecountless thousands that must inhabit them. He could hold them off inthe shaft as long as he wished if he had no other need for the sword.But he knew that as soon as he turned his back they would be upon himagain, and if he should once fall....
He could not spare a moment, or a chance.
He looked at Ciara, not knowing what to do, and it seemed to him thatthe sheathing frost had melted, just a little, around her face.
Desperately, he struck down again at the creatures in the shaft, andthen the answer came to him.
He dropped the sword. The squat, round mechanism was beside him, withits broken crystal wheel. He picked it up.
It was heavy. It would have been heavy for two men to lift, but Starkwas a driven man. Grunting, swaying with the effort, he lifted it andlet it fall, out and down.
Like a thunderbolt it struck among those slender bridges, the spiderwebof icy strands that spanned the shaft. Stark watched it go, and listenedto the brittle snapping of the ice, the final crashing of a millionshards at the bottom far below.
He smiled, and turned again to Ciara, picking up the sword.
* * * * *
It was hours later. Stark walked across the glowing ice of the valley,toward the cairn. The sword of Ban Cruach hung at his side. He had takenthe talisman and replaced it in the boss, and he was himself again.
Ciara and Balin walked beside him. The color had come back into theirfaces, but faintly, and they were still weak enough to be glad ofStark's hands to steady them.
At the foot of the cairn they stopped, and Stark mounted it alone.
He looked for a long moment into the face of Ban Cruach. Then he tookthe sword, and carefully turned the rings upon it so that the radiationspread out as it had before, to close the Gates of Death.
Almost reverently, he replaced the sword in Ban Cruach's hands. Then heturned and went down over the tumbled stones.
The shimmering darkness brooded still over the distant tower. Underneaththe ice, the elfin city still spread downward. The shining ones wouldrebuild their bridges in the shaft, and go on as they had before,dreaming their cold dreams of ancient power.
But they would not go out through the Gates of Death. Ban Cruach in hisrusty mail was still lord of the pass, the warder of the Norlands.
Stark said to the others, "Tell the story in Kushat. Tell it through theNorlands, the story of Ban Cruach and why he guards the Gates of Death.Men have forgotten. And they should not forget."
They went out of the valley then, the two men and the woman. They didnot speak again, and the way out through the pass seemed endless.
Some of Ciara's chieftains met them at the mouth of the pass aboveKushat. They had waited there, ashamed to return to the city withouther, but not daring to go back into the pass again. They had seen thecreatures of the valley, and they were still afraid.
They gave mounts to the three. They themselves walked behind Ciara, andtheir heads were low with shame.
They came into Kushat through the riven gate, and Stark went with Ciarato the King City, where she made Balin follow too.
"Your sister is there," she said. "I have had her cared for."
The city was quiet, with the sullen apathy that follows after battle.The men of Mekh cheered Ciara in the streets. She rode proudly, butStark saw that her face was gaunt and strained.
He, too, was marked deep by what he had seen and done, beyond the Gatesof Death.
They went up into the castle.
Thanis took Balin into her arms, and wept. She had lost her first wildfury, and she could look at Ciara now with a restrained hatred that hada tinge almost of admiration.
"You fought for Kushat," she said, unwillingly, when she had heard thestory. "For that, at least, I can thank you."
She went to Stark then, and looked up at him. "Kushat, and my brother'slife...." She kissed him, and there were tears on her lips. But sheturned to Ciara with a bitter smile.
"No one can hold him, any more than the wind can be held. You will learnthat."
She went out then with Balin, and left Stark and Ciara alone, in thechambers of the king.
* * * * *
Ciara said, "The little one is very shrewd." She unbuckled the hauberkand let it fall, standing slim in her tunic of black leather, and walkedto the tall windows that looked out upon the mountains. She leaned herhead wearily against the stone.
"An evil day, an evil deed. And now I have Kushat to govern, with noreward of power from beyond the Gates of Death. How man can be misled!"
Stark poured wine from the flagon and brought it to her. She looked athim over the rim of the cup, with a certain wry amusement.
"The little one is shrewd, and she is right. I don't know that I can beas wise as she.... Will you stay with me, Stark, or will you go?"
He did not answer at once, and she asked him, "What hunger drives you,Stark? It is not conquest, as it was with me. What are you looking forthat you cannot find?"
He thought back across the years, back to the beginning--to the boyN'Chaka who had once been happy with Old One and little Tika, in theblaze and thunder and bitter frosts of a valley in the Twilight Belt ofMercury. He remembered how all that had ended, under the guns of theminers--the men who were his own kind.
He shook his head. "I don't know. It doesn't matter." He took herbetween his two hands, feeling the strength and the splendor of her, andit was oddly difficult to find words.
"I want to stay, Ciara. Now, this minute, I could promise that I wouldstay forever. But I know myself. You belong here, you will make Kushatyour own. I don't. Someday I will go."
Ciara nodded. "My neck, also, was not made for chains, and one countrywas too little to hold me. Very well, Stark. Let it be so."
She smiled, and let the wine-cup fall.
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