He came to himself--the self that was Captain Burk Winters--in a room
that was much like the one he last remembered, in Valkis, except that
the walls were of a dark green rock and there was no prism.
Winters could remember nothing of what had happened since that last
room, except that he knew he had had a strong emotional shock. Jill's
name was uppermost in his mind. He began to tremble with a deep
excitement.
He got to his feet, and it was then that he realized he was shackled.
Chains ran from cuffs on his wrists to similar cuffs on his ankles,
passing through rings on a metal belt around his waist. These
constituted his entire clothing. He saw also that there freshly healed
scars on his body.
The heavy door was opened for him before he could begin to pound on it.
Four tall barbarians, their harness magnificent with jewels and wrought
metal, formed up a guard around him, and an officer led the way. They
did not speak to Winters, and he knew the uselessness of trying to get
anything out of them.
He had not the faintest idea where he was, or how he had come there,
beyond a vague memory of pain and flight that was like something he had
dreamed.
And somewhere, during that dream, he had seen Jill, spoken to her. He
was as certain of that as he was of the weight of his chains.
He stumbled, because his sight was blurred with tears. Up to then, he
had not been sure. He had seen the twisted wreck of her flier, and
while he did not believe it, there was always the chance that she might
really be dead, and lost to him beyond all hope.
Now he knew. She was alive, and if Winters had been alone he would have
wept like a child.
Instead, he studied the corridors and the great halls through which the
guard took him. From the size and the splendour of them he knew that he
was in a palace, and guessed that it might be the one he had seen on
the cliffs above Valkis. This was confirmed when he caught a glimpse of
the town through a window embrasure.
The palace was older than anything he had seen on Mars, except for the
buried ruins of Lhak in the northern deserts. But this was no ruin. It
had grown old in sombre beauty. The patterns of the mosaic floors were
blurred, the precious stones worn thin as porcelain. The tapestries,
preserved by the wonderful Martian formula that had been lost for
centuries, like everything else on Mars, had grown frail and brittle,
their colours all softened to faint glows, infinitely sad and lovely.
Here and there, on the walls or the soaring vault of a roof, were
murals--magnificent pageants of lost glory, dim as an old man's memory.
The seas they pictured were deep and blue, and the ships were tall, and
the mail of the warriors was set with gems, and the captive queens were
beautiful as dusky pearls.
Proud architecture, mating beauty with strength, and showing that
strange blend of culture and barbarism that is so typically Martian.
Winters reflected on how long ago these stones had been quarried, and
went on to reflect that at that time civilization had already destroyed
itself in a series of atomic wars, and the proud Kings of Valkis were
only bandit chieftains in a world that was slipping downward toward the
night.
They came at length to doors of beaten gold that were more than twice
Burk's six-foot height. The Keshi guards who stood there pushed them
wide, and Burk saw the throne room.
Westering sunlight slanted in from the high embrasures, falling across
the pillars and the tessellated floor. The pale light touched vagrant
glints from the shields and the weapons of dead kings, warmed the
old banners to brief life. Everywhere else in that vast place was a
brooding darkness, full of whispers and small faint echoings.
A shaft of cool gold fell directly upon the throne at the far end of
the room.
The high seat itself was cut from a single block of black basalt, and
as Winters approached it, his swinging chains making a loud sound in
the silence, he saw that the stone had been already half shaped by the
sea. It was very worn and smooth with the patient sanding of the tides,
and where hands had lain on the arm-pieces there were deep hollows, and
on the basalt step below.
An old woman sat upon the throne. She was wrapped in a black cloak, and
her hair wound into a sort of white crown on her head, braided with
jewels. She stared with half-blind eyes at the Earthman, and suddenly
she spoke, in sonorous High Martian, a tongue as antique on Mars as
Sanskrit is on Earth. Winters could not understand one word of it, but
he knew from her tone and expression that she was quite mad.
Someone sat in the heavy shadows by her feet, outside the shaft of
sunlight, and veiled by it from Winter's sight. He could catch only
a vague pallor of ivory-tinted flesh, but for some reason his nerves
tingled with premonition.
As he neared the high seat, the old woman rose and stretched out her
arm toward him, a wrinkled Cassandra crying doom upon his head. The
wild echoes of her voice rolled from the vaulted roof, and her eyes
were full of a blazing hate.
The guards set the butts of their spears into his back so that he was
thrown face down before the basalt step. A low, sweet, mocking laugh
came out of the shadows, and he felt the pressure of a little sandaled
foot on his neck.
He knew the voice that said, "Greeting, Captain Winters! The throne of
Valkis welcomes you."
* * * * *
The foot was withdrawn from his neck. He rose. The old woman had fallen
back onto the throne. She was intoning what sounded like a church
litany, and her upturned face had an exalted look.
The remembered voice said out of the dimness, "My mother is repeating
the coronation rites. Presently she will demand the year's tribute
from the Outer Islands and the coastal tribes. Time and reality do not
bother her, and it pleases her to play at being queen. Therefore, as
you see, I, Fand, rule Valkis from the shadow of the throne."
"Sometimes," Winters said, "You must come into the light."
"Yes."
A soft, quick rustle and she was standing there in the shaft of
sunlight. Her hair was the colour of night after moonset, intricately
coiled. She was dressed in the old, arrogant fashion of the bandit
kingdoms--the long full skirt slit to the waist at the sides, so that
her thighs showed when she moved, the wide jeweled girdle, collar of
golden plaques. Her small, high breasts were bare and lovely, her body
slender, with a catlike grace.
Her face was as he remembered it. Proud and fine, golden-eyed, a mouth
like a red fruit that mingled honey and poison, a lazy, slumberous
power behind the beauty, the fascination of all things that are at once
beautiful and deadly.
She looked at Winters and smiled. "So at last you have reached the end
of your search."
He looked down at his chains and his nakedness. "A strange way to reach
it. I paid Kor Hal well for this privilege." He gave her a searching
glance. "Do you rule Shanga, as well as Valkis? If so, you're not very
courteous to your guests."
"On the contrary, I treat them very well--as you shall see." Her golden
eyes taunted him. "But you didn't come here to practice Shanga, Captain
Winters."
"Why else would I have come?"
"To find Jill Leland."
He was not really surprised. Subconsciously he had known that she knew.
But he managed a look of blank amazement.
"Jill Leland is dead."
"Was she, when you saw her in the garden, and spoke to her?" Fand
laughed. "Do you think we're such fools? Everyone who comes to the
Hall of Shanga in the Trade Cities is carefully checked and examined.
We were particularly careful with you, Captain Winters, because
psychologically you were the wrong type to be drawn to Shanga. Men like
you are too strong to need escape.
"You knew, of course, that your fiancee had taken up the practice. You
didn't like it, and tried to make her stop. Kor Hal said that she was
terribly upset about it on several occasions. But Jill had gone too far
to stop. She begged to be allowed the full power, the real Shanga. She
helped us plan her supposed death in the sea bottom. We would have done
that anyway, for our own protection, since the girl has influential
connections and we can't afford to have people hunting for our clients.
But she wanted you to believe that she was dead, so that you would
forget her. She felt she had no right to marry you, that she would ruin
your life. Doesn't that touch you, Captain Winters? Doesn't that bring
tears to your eyes?"
It brought more than that to Winters. It brought an overpowering urge
to take this lovely she-devil between his hands and break her and then
stamp the pieces into the earth.
His chains made one harsh jangling sound, and then the spears came up
and touched his flesh with sharp red kisses. He stood still and said,
"Why have you done this? Is it for money, or for hate?"
"For both, Earthman! And for something more important than either of
them." Her lips curved in brief amusement. "Besides, I've done nothing
to your people. I built the Halls of Shanga, yes. But the men and women
of Earth degrade themselves of their own free will. Come here."
She motioned him to follow her to the window. As she crossed the vast
room, she said,
"You have seen part of the palace. Earth credits have rebuilt and
restored the house of my fathers. The credits of apelings who wish to
return to their normal state because the civilization they have forced
themselves is too much for them. Look out there. Earth money has done
that, too."
Winters looked out upon a sight that had almost vanished from the face
of Mars. A garden, the varied and jewel-bright garden that would have
belonged with a palace like this. Broad lawns of bronze green turf,
formal plantings, statuary....
For some reason he could not quite remember, that garden gave Burk
Winters a cold shuddering chill.
But the garden itself was only a part of what he saw. A small part.
Beneath the window the ground sloped away into a vast bowl-shaped
depression, perhaps a quarter of a mile away, and Winters looked down
into an amphitheatre. Ruined as it was, it was still magnificent, with
tiers of seats rising like steps of hewn stone from the inner walls. He
thought of how it must have looked when the games were held in the old
days, with all of those thousands of places filled.
Now, in the arena, there was another garden. A wild and tangled garden,
closed in by the high protective walls that had kept the beasts from
the spectators. There were trees in it, and open spaces, and he could
make out moving forms among the shadows, strange forms. He could not
see them clearly for the distance and the slanting light, but a chill
pang struck through him, a cold breath of foreboding.
In the center of the arena was a lake. Not a large one, and probably
not deep, but there were creatures splashing in it, and he caught the
faint echo of a reptilian scream. An echo he had heard before....
* * * * *
Fand was looking outward to the amphitheatre, with an odd, slow smile.
Winters saw that there were people already in the lower tiers of the
seats, and more of them gathering.
"What is this thing," he asked her, "that is more important than money
or your hatred for the men of Earth?"
All the ancient pride of her race and house flashed out in her eyes as
she answered him. He forgot his loathing of her for a moment, in his
respect for her deep sincerity.