No answer.
Winters said rather petulantly, "There's no need to be so secretive.
After all, I'm one of you now."
The slim young man said sharply, "Do the beasts lie down with the
masters?"
Winters started to bristle, and the barbarian put his hand on the
wicked little sap he carried at his belt. Then Kor Hal spoke coolly.
"You wished to practice Shanga in its true form, Captain Winters. That
is what you have paid for. That is what you will receive. All else is
irrelevant."
Winters shrugged sulkily. He sat smoking his sedative tobacco, and he
did not speak again.
After a long, long time the seemingly endless desert began to change.
Low ridges rose naked from the sand and grew into a mountain range, of
which nothing was left now but the barren rock.
Beyond the mountains lay a dead sea bottom. It stretched away under the
moonlight, dropping, always dropping, until at last it became only a
vast pit of darkness. Ribs of chalk and coral gleamed here and there,
pushing through the lichens like bones through the dried skin of a man
long dead.
Winters saw that there was a city between the foothills and the sea.
It had followed the receding water down the slopes. From this height,
Winters could see the outlines of five harbours, abandoned one by one
as the sea drew back, the great stone docks still standing. Houses had
been built to fill their emptiness, and then abandoned in their turn
for a lower level.
Now the straggling town had coalesced along the bank of the canal that
drew what feeble life was left from the buried springs of the bottom.
There was something infinitely sad about that thin dark line--all that
was left of a blue and rolling ocean.
The flier circled and came down. The Keshi said something rapidly in
his own dialect, from which Winters caught the one word, _Valkis_. Kor
Hal answered him. Then he turned to Winters and said,
"We have not far to go. Stay close by me."
The four men left the flier. Winters knew that he was under guard, and
felt that it was not entirely for the sake of protecting him.
* * * * *
The wind blew thin and dry. Dust rose in clouds around their feet.
Valkis lay ahead, a stony darkness sprawling upward toward the cliffs,
cold in the eerie light of the twin moons. Winters saw, high up on the
crest, the broken towers of a palace.
They walked beside still black water, on paving stones worn hollow
by the sandaled feet of countless generations. Even at this late
hour, Valkis did not sleep. Torches burned yellow against the night.
Somewhere a double-banked harp made strange music. The streets, the
alley mouths, the doorways and the flat roofs of the houses rustled
with life.
Lithe lean men and catlike women watched the strangers, hot-eyed
and silent. And over all, Winters heard the particular sound of the
Low-Canal towns--the whispering and chiming of the wanton little bells
that the women wear, braided into their dark hair, hanging from their
ears, chained around their ankles.
Evil, that town. Ancient, and very evil, but not tired. Winters could
feel the pulse of life that beat there, strong and hot. He was afraid.
His own civilian garb and the white tunics of his companions were
terribly conspicuous in this place of bare breasts and bright kilts and
jeweled girdles.
No one molested them. Kor Hal led the way into a large house and shut
the door of beaten bronze behind them, and Winters felt a great relief.
He turned to Kor Hal.
"How soon?" he asked, and tried to conceal the trembling of his hands.
"Everything is ready, Winters. Halk, show him the way."
The Keshi nodded and went off, with Winters at his heels.
This was very different from the Hall of Shanga in Kahora. Within these
walls of quarried stone, men and women had lived and loved and died
in violence. The blood and tears of centuries had dried in the cracks
between the flags. The rugs, the tapestries, and the furnishings were
worth a fortune as antiques. Their beauty was worn, but still bright.
At the end of a corridor was a bronze door, pierced by a narrow grille.