There were many lights, far below. Tiny pinpricks of flame where
torches burned in the streets beside the Low-Canal--the thread of black
water that was all that remained of a forgotten ocean.
Stark had never been here before. Now he looked at the city that
sprawled down the slope under the low moons, and shivered, the
primitive twitching of the nerves that an animal feels in the presence
of death.
For the streets where the torches flared were only a tiny part of
Valkis. The life of the city had flowed downward from the cliff-tops,
following the dropping level of the sea. Five cities, the oldest
scarcely recognizable as a place of human habitation. Five harbors, the
docks and quays still standing, half buried in the dust.
Five ages of Martian history, crowned on the topmost level with the
ruined palace of the old pirate kings of Valkis. The towers still
stood, broken but indomitable, and in the moonlight they had a sleeping
look, as though they dreamed of blue water and the sound of waves, and
of tall ships coming in heavy with treasure.
Stark picked his way slowly down the steep descent. There was something
fascinating to him in the stone houses, roofless and silent in the
night. The paving blocks still showed the rutting of wheels where
carters had driven to the market-place, and princes had gone by in
gilded chariots. The quays were scarred where ships had lain against
them, rising and falling with the tides.
Stark's senses had developed in a strange school, and the thin veneer
of civilization he affected had not dulled them. Now it seemed to him
that the wind had the echoes of voices in it, and the smell of spices
and fresh-spilled blood.
He was not surprised when, in the last level above the living town,
armed men came out of the shadows and stopped him.
They were lean, dark men, very wiry and light of foot, and their faces
were the faces of wolves--not primitive wolves at all, but beasts of
prey that had been civilized for so many thousands of years that they
could afford to forget it.
They were most courteous, and Stark would not have cared to disobey
their request.