Eric John Stark

by Leigh Brackett

  Relics, possessions, or perhaps only loot—they were of the Ramas and the past that should be dead but not quite. They set Stark to bristling, and he gripped the sword more tightly, but Fianna did not glance at them.

  A flight of dark steps took them up into a passageway that smelled of the upper air. And now a whispering began about them, a muttering and chuckling and piping that he had heard before, and it seemed uncannily to Stark as though the sounds that were called the voices of the Ramas were really voices now. It was as though the old ones, the Ever-living, watched and gloated over the thing that was about to be done.

  “The wind is rising and it will soon be dawn,” said Fianna, “We must hurry.”

  Cold air struck Stark’s face as he followed her upward again, this time into a room whose windows let in the light of the flying moons.

  “We are there,” whispered Fianna. “Now, very quietly. I must know first if Delgaun has returned.”

  She went softly down a hallway, motioning him to wait. After a moment, without any sound at all, a little crack of light spilled into the corridor and showed Fianna pressed close outside a door she had softly opened.

  Stark’s pulses thudded as he caught the sound of a silvery voice that he recognized as Berild’s. Then the dark silhouette of Fianna moved, making a beckoning gesture.

  He came softly to her side and she stepped away so that he might see through the crack in the door into the lamplit room.

  He saw Kynon, in profile, bound by leather thongs to one of the massive stone pillars. There was a great bruise on Kynon’s temple, and in his harsh, powerful face there was a look that Stark had never seen on any human face before.

  Delgaun stood nearby, but Kynon ignored him and stared fixedly at Berild.

  “You may well look, Kynon,” she said. “It is the last you will see of Berild, your submissive and patient woman. You great ox of a barbarian! Not in a thousand years have I been so bored with anyone as I have been with you, and your roaring boasts and childish schemes.”

  “There’s no time for this,” Delgaun said sharply. “Let us get it done.”

  Berild nodded, and went to a small coffer of golden metal that rested on a table. She pressed a series of patterned bosses in an intricate sequence, and there was a sharp click of an opening lock. A shiver ran up along Stark’s spine as he watched Berild raise the lid of the coffer and reach her hands inside it.

  On the slave block of Valkis, Kynon had brought forth two crowns of shining crystal and a rod of flame. But as glass is to diamond, as the pallid moon to the light of the sun, were those things to the reality that now shone forth.

  In her two hands Berild had the ancient crowns of the Ramas, the givers of life. Twin circlets of glorious fire, dimming the shallow light of the lamps, putting a nimbus of light around the white-clad woman so that as she walked across the room she was like a goddess walking in a cloud of stars.

  She held them for Kynon to see, mocking him. “You blazoned them on your banner for all the world to see—do not shrink from them now!”

  “I say again, we waste time,” cut in the sharp voice of Delgaun.

  Delgaun came and stood beside bound Kynon, with his back also against the pillar. And Berild raised the two flashing crowns in her hands and bent toward them.

  In the ear of Stark, Fianna said, “Now!”

  XIV

  Stark went into the room with his sword up and he went fast, heading toward Delgaun. He had always recognized the infinite dangerousness of this man. And now that he knew that it was backed by countless lifetimes of cunning and experience, he thought that his chances were not good.

  Delgaun’s yellow eyes flashed amazement, but he reacted with superb speed. He ran swiftly toward the corner of the room, and scrabbled a gun out of its hiding-place under a cloak.

  And Stark thought, as he plunged, “Of course, he wouldn’t have the gun on him when his body was going to be exchanged with Kynon’s…”

  He had never seen such speed as Delgaun’s, turning with the gun. But the Shunni blade went home before the turn was ever completed, and Delgaun pitched and fell, the fall of his body wrenching the sword-hilt out of Stark’s hand.

  Stark, kneeling to retrieve the sword, heard a ringing sound and saw something bright rolling past him. It was one of the crystal crowns, but whatever material they were made of, it was not really crystal, for the crown was unharmed by its fall. Still stooping, grabbing the sword-hilt, he turned swiftly.

  Berild had dropped the Crowns, and had drawn a slender knife. In her face was terror. For Kynon was loose, cut loose by Fianna, and the big barbarian was advancing toward her. His face was terrible as he grasped with hungry hands for the woman.

  Berild’s knife flashed, twice, and then Kynon’s great arms closed around her. She screamed chokingly. Kynon’s face was as red as the blood that was pouring from his side, his mighty muscles straining, and in a moment, by the time Stark was on his feet again, Berild was broken and dead.

  Kynon flung her limp body away, like an outworn, unclean doll. He turned slowly and his hand went to the gashes in his side. He said thickly, “The Rama witch has killed me. My life is pouring out…”

  He stood, rocking and swaying, with a numbed expression on his face as though he could not actually believe it. Stark went to his side and supported him.

  “Kynon, listen!”

  Kynon did not even seem to hear him. His eyes had turned upon the motionless bodies of Berild and Delgaun.

  “Witch and wizard,” he muttered. “All this time—deceiving me, laughing at me, using me for their own ends. It is good that you killed the man, too.”

  Stark spoke urgently. “Kynon, their evil will still live and work if the men of the Drylands march! Not Berild and Delgaun, but someone else will spend the blood of the tribes for power.”

  Kynon seemed dazedly to consider that, and then his eyes blazed fiercely.

  “Power that should have been mine…. No, by God! Help me, Stark—I have a thing to tell the tribes!”

  He was lurching, like an oak about to fall. Powerful as Stark was, he had difficulty supporting Kynon as they went out of the room. Fianna remained, still standing by the pillar and trembling and looking after them.

  The dawn lightened the streets of Sinharat, and the morning wind was stronger. Louder came the pipings and flutings from the city. Kynon, his left hand pressed against his side, looked up at the stone faces of the Ramas and then raised his clenched right hand and shook it at them.

  They came to the great stairway and started down it. Below them in the sunrise light the vast huddle of tents was awakening. Then a voice yelled, a tribesman pointed wildly to where Stark and Kynon came painfully down the stair, and with a bursting roar of excited voices, the whole camp came to life. The men of Kesh and Shun came crowding in hundreds, then in thousands, their faces fierce and strange in the brightening light as they looked up to where Kynon stood swaying, with Stark steadying him.

  Kynon looked down at them without speaking for a moment. Then he seemed to gather his strength, and his bull voice roared out almost as loudly as it had on the slave block in Valkis.

  “I have been deceived and betrayed, and so have you all! Delgaun and Berild conspired to use us of the Drylands, as a sword to hack conquests for them, not us!”

  It took moments for them to take it in. Then a low growling sound came up from the thousands below.

  A Keshi chieftain leaped up a few steps on the stairway and shook his weapon and shouted, “Death for them!”

  And the crowd took up and echoed that fierce shout.

  Kynon held up his hand. “They are already dead…and Delgaun was slain by Stark, who tried to save me. But the snake Berild stung me, and I am dying.”

  He swayed so that Stark had to hold up his massive weight by both arms around him, but then he gathered his strength again.

 
“I lied when I said I had the secret of the Ramas,” Kynon said. “And now I know that that secret would yield only evil. Forget it, and forget the war that you would fight only for the profit of others.”

  He tried to say more, but did not seem to be able to voice the words. Stark felt the weight of him sagging more heavily, and tried to hold him, but Kynon said thickly, “Let be.”

  He slid down, still holding his side, to sit upon the steps. He sat there, as the sun rose higher. With the great battlements and towers of Sinharat behind him and with the fighting-men of the Drylands looking silently up at him, and the desert stretching far away. And what thoughts were mirrored in his face, Stark, who stood behind him, could not see.

  Kynon said no more. He sat, and his shoulders sagged, and then his whole body sagged down and was still.

  For a time, nothing at all happened. Stark stood waiting, and farther back up the stair, Knighton and Walsh and Arrod and Themis stood, peering and stricken, but no one moved.

  Then four Chieftains of the Shunni came silently up the stair. They did not even glance at Stark. They picked up Kynon’s body and went back down the stair with it, and the crowd of warriors divided in front of them.

  Stark climbed back up the stairway to where Knighton and the others waited, a group of downcast, doubtful men.

  “The thing’s blown,” said Stark. “There won’t be any war, and there won’t be any loot.”

  Walsh cursed. He asked, “What happened?”

  Stark shrugged. “You heard Kynon.”

  They were not satisfied at all, but there was nothing they could do about it. They stood pondering, looking with gloomy eyes down at the striking of the skin tents and the loading of the beasts, as the great camp broke up. Knighton said, finally, “I’m getting out. And the rest of you had better go with me and not back to Valkis or anywhere near it.”

  The others had already had that thought. Delgaun’s lieutenants would be waiting in Valkis, ready for the great stroke against the Border, and they would not be happy with the thing that had happened.

  Stark said, “I won’t go with you. I’m going to Tarak.”

  He thought of Simon Ashton, waiting in Tarak, and he thought that Ashton would be glad of the word he brought, the word that meant peace and not war.

  Walsh, looking at Stark without love, told him, “It’s just as well. I think you Jonahed this whole deal, though I don’t know how. There are riding-beasts in the pen behind Kynon’s palace.”

  They turned and went away. Stark looked back down the stairway toward the desert.

  The vast encampment was disappearing as if by magic. It was dissolving into streams of men and animals that moved out in long caravans, in many different directions, back into the recesses of the Drylands.

  One file of men and beasts moved to the sound of booming drums and skirling pipes. Kynon of Shun was going home as a leader should.

  Stark walked back through the silent streets of Sinharat, and came again into the room where Delgaun and Berild had died. Their bodies were not there now. But Fianna sat by the window looking out at the departure of the hosts.

  Stark’s gaze swiftly searched around the room. Fianna turned, and said, “They’re not here, if it’s the Crowns of the Ramas you are looking for. I hid them.”

  “The thought that was in my mind was to destroy them,” said Stark.

  She nodded. “I had the same thought. I almost did it. But—”

  “But the addiction to life is a strong one, indeed,” said Stark. “So you said, remember?”

  Fianna got up and came to face him, and her face was shadowed by doubt.

  “I know this,” she said, “I do not want another life, who have had so many. I do not want it now. But when the body finally fails, and death stoops near, it may be different. There will always be time to destroy the Crowns.”

  “There will always be time,” said Stark. “But there will never be the will.”

  Fianna came closer to him and her eyes were suddenly fierce. “Don’t be so smug in your strength! You haven’t felt your life guttering out…as I have, more than once! Perhaps when you come to feel that, you would be glad to join me in the Sending On of Minds.”

  Stark was silent for a moment, and then he shook his head. “I don’t think so. Life has not been so soft and sweet for me that I would want to live it over.”

  “Don’t answer me now,” Fianna said. “Answer me thirty years from now. And if your answer is ‘Yes,’ come seek me here in Sinharat. Soon or late, I will always return here.”

  “I will not return,” Stark said flatly.

  She looked up at him, and then she whispered, “Perhaps you won’t. But don’t be too sure.”

  The throbbing of Kynon’s burial-drums was only a faint echo now, and far out on the desert the dust of the caravans receded.

  Stark turned. “I am going, as soon as I can prepare. Do you go with me?”

  Fianna shook her head. “I stay here, at least for a while. I am the last of my people, and this is my place.”

  Stark hesitated, then turned and left her.

  When night came, he was riding far out on the desert, leading his pack-beasts. The wind was rising, murmuring and piping in the lonesomeness, but he knew it was only illusion that made him seem to hear at this distance the whispering, fluting voices of the city behind him.

  Would he someday go back there, questing for another life, seeking out Fianna so that they too might go down through ages as Delgaun and Berild had done?

  No. And yet….

  Stark turned in the saddle and looked back, at the white towers of Sinharat rising against the larger moon.

  BOOK TWO

  People of the Talisman

  I

  Through all the long cold hours of the Norland night the Martian had not moved nor spoken. At dusk of the day before Eric John Stark had brought him into the ruined tower and laid him down, wrapped in blankets, on the snow. He had built a fire of dry lichens, and since then the two men had waited, alone in the vast wasteland that girdles the polar cap of Mars.

  Now, just before dawn, Camar the Martian spoke.

  “Stark.”

  “Yes?”

  “I am dying.”

  “Yes.”

  “I will not reach Kushat.”

  “No.”

  Camar nodded. He was silent again.

  The wind howled down from the northern ice, and the broken walls rose up against the wind, brooding, gigantic, roofless now but so huge and sprawling that they seemed less like walls than cliffs of ebon stone. Stark would not have gone near them but for Camar. They were wrong, somehow, with a taint of forgotten evil still about them.

  The big Earthman glanced at Camar, and his face was sad. “A man likes to die in his own place,” he said abruptly. “I am sorry.”

  “The Lord of Silence is a great personage,” Camar answered. “He does not mind the meeting pIace. No. It was not for that I came back into the Norlands.”

  He was shaken by an agony that was not of the body. “But I will not reach Kushat.”

  Stark spoke quietly, using the courtly High Martian almost as fluently as Camar.

  “I have known that there was a burden heavier than death upon my brother’s soul.”

  He leaned over, placing one large hand on the Martian’s shoulder. “My brother has given his life for mine. Therefore, I will take his burden upon myself, if I can.”

  He did not want Camar’s burden, whatever it might be. But the Martian had fought beside him through a long guerrilla campaign far to the south, among the harried tribes of the Dryland borders. He was a good man with his hands, and in the end had taken the bullet that was meant for Stark, knowing quite well what he was doing. They were friends.

  That was why Stark had brought Camar into this bleak north country, trying to reach the city of h
is birth. The Martian was driven by some secret demon. He was afraid to die before he reached Kushat.

  And now he had no choice.

  “I have sinned, Stark,” he said softly. “I have stolen a holy thing.”

  Stark crouched beside him. “What thing?”

  “You’re an outlander, you would not know about Ban Cruach and the talisman that he left when he went away forever beyond the Gates of Death.”

  Camar flung aside the blankets and sat up, his voice gaining a febrile strength.

  “I was born and bred in the Thieves’ Quarter under the Wall. I was proud of my skill. And the talisman was a challenge. It was a treasured thing, so treasured that hardly a man has touched it since the days of Ban Cruach. And that was in the days when men still had the lustre on them, before they forgot that they were gods.

  “ ‘Guard well the Gates of Death,’ he said, ‘that is the city’s trust. And keep the talisman always, for the day may come when you will need its strength.’ No enemy, you see, could ever harm Kushat as long as it was there.

  “But I was a thief, and proud. And I stole the talisman.”

  His hands went to his girdle, a belt of worn leather with a boss of battered steel. But his fingers were already numb.

  “Take it, Stark. Open the boss, there, on the side, where the beast’s head is carved.”

  Stark took the belt from Camar and found the hidden spring. The rounded top of the boss came free. Inside it was something wrapped in a scrap of silk.

  “I had to go away from Kushat,” Camar whispered. “I could not ever go back. But it was enough, to have taken that.”

  He watched, shaken between awe and pride and remorse, as Stark unwrapped the bit of silk.