The leader of the Valkisians nodded his narrow head. "You're expected."
His sharp eyes had taken in every feature of the Earthman, and Stark
knew that his description had been memorized down to the last detail.
Valkis guarded its doors with care.
"Ask in the city," said the sentry. "Anyone can direct you to the
palace."
Stark nodded and went on, down through the long-dead streets in the
moonlight and the silence.
With shocking suddenness, he was plunged into the streets of the living.
It was very late now, but Valkis was awake and stirring. Seething,
rather. The narrow twisting ways were crowded. The laughter of women
came down from the flat roofs. Torchlight flared, gold and scarlet,
lighting the wineshops, making blacker the shadows of the alley-mouths.
Stark left his beast at a _serai_ on the edge of the canal. The
paddocks were already jammed. Stark recognized the long-legged brutes
of the Dryland breed, and as he left a caravan passed him, coming in,
with a jangling of bronze bangles and a great hissing and stamping in
the dust.
The riders were tall barbarians--Keshi, Stark thought, from the way
they braided their tawny hair. They wore plain leather, and their
blue-eyed women rode like queens.
Valkis was full of them. For days, it seemed, they must have poured
in across the dead sea bottom, from the distant oases and the barren
deserts of the back-blocks. Brawny warriors of Kesh and Shun, making
holiday beside the Low-Canal, where there was more water than any of
them had seen in their lives.
They were in Valkis, these barbarians, but they were not part of it.
Shouldering his way through the streets, Stark got the peculiar flavor
of the town, that he guessed could never be touched or changed by
anything.
In a square, a girl danced to the music of harp and drum. The air was
heavy with the smell of wine and burning pitch and incense. A lithe,
swart Valkisian in his bright kilt and jewelled girdle leaped out and
danced with the girl, his teeth flashing as he whirled and postured. In
the end he bore her off, laughing, her black hair hanging down his back.
Women looked at Stark. Women graceful as cats, bare to the waist, their
skirts slit at the sides above the thigh, wearing no ornaments but the
tiny golden bells that are the particular property of the Low-Canal
towns, so that the air is always filled with their delicate, wanton
chiming.
Valkis had a laughing, wicked soul. Stark had been in many places in
his life, but never one before that beat with such a pulse of evil,
incredibly ancient, but strong and gay.
He found the palace at last--a great rambling structure of quarried
stone, with doors and shutters of beaten bronze closed against the dust
and the incessant wind. He gave his name to the guard and was taken
inside, through halls hung with antique tapestries, the flagged floors
worn hollow by countless generations of sandalled feet.
* * * * *
Again, Stark's half-wild senses told him that life within these walls
had not been placid. The very stones whispered of age-old violence, the
shadows were heavy with the lingering ghosts of passion.
He was brought before Delgaun, the lord of Valkis, in the big central
room that served as his headquarters.
Delgaun was lean and catlike, after the fashion of his race. His black
hair showed a stippling of silver, and the hard beauty of his face was
strongly marked, the lines drawn deep and all the softness of youth
long gone away. He wore a magnificent harness, and his eyes, under fine
dark brows, were like drops of hot gold.
He looked up as the Earthman came in, one swift penetrating glance.
Then he said, "You're Stark."
There was something odd about those yellow eyes, bright and keen as a
killer hawk's yet somehow secret, as though the true thoughts behind
them would never show through. Instinctively, Stark disliked the man.
But he nodded and came up to the council table, turning his attention
to the others in the room. A handful of Martians--Low-Canallers, chiefs
and fighting men from their ornaments and their proud looks--and
several outlanders, their conventional garments incongruous in this
place.
Stark knew them all. Knighton and Walsh of Terra, Themis of Mercury,
Arrod of Callisto Colony--and Luhar of Venus. Pirates, thieves,
renegades, and each one an expert in his line.
Ashton was right. There was something big, something very big and very
ugly, shaping between Valkis and the Drylands.
But that was only a quick, passing thought in Stark's mind. It was on
Luhar that his attention centered. Bitter memory and hatred had come to
savage life within him as soon as he saw the Venusian.
The man was handsome. A cashiered officer of the crack Venusian Guards,
very slim, very elegant, his pale hair cropped short and curling, his
dark tunic fitting him like a second skin.
He said, "The aborigine! I thought we had enough barbarians here
without sending for more."
Stark said nothing. He began to walk toward Luhar.
Luhar said sharply, "There's no use in getting nasty, Stark. Past
scores are past. We're on the same side now."
The Earthman spoke, then, with a peculiar gentleness.
"We were on the same side once before. Against Terro-Venus Metals.
Remember?"
"I remember very well!" Luhar was speaking now not to Stark alone,
but to everyone in the room. "I remember that your innocent barbarian
friends had me tied to the block there in the swamps, and that you
were watching the whole thing with honest pleasure. If the Company men
hadn't come along, I'd be screaming there yet."
"You sold us out," Stark said. "You had it coming."
He continued to walk toward Luhar.
Delgaun spoke. He did not raise his voice, yet Stark felt the impact of
his command.
"There will be no fighting here," Delgaun said. "You are both hired
mercenaries, and while you take my pay you will forget your private
quarrels. Do you understand?"
Luhar nodded and sat down, smiling out of the corner of his mouth at
Stark, who stood looking with narrowed eyes at Delgaun.
He was still half blind with his anger against Luhar. His hands ached
for the kill. But even so, he recognized the power in Delgaun.
A sound shockingly akin to the growl of a beast echoed in his throat.
Then, gradually, he relaxed. The man Delgaun he would have challenged.
But to do so would wreck the mission that he had promised to carry out
here for Ashton.
He shrugged, and joined the others at the table.
Walsh of Terra rose abruptly and began to prowl back and forth.
"How much longer do we have to wait?" he demanded.
Delgaun poured wine into a bronze goblet. "Don't expect me to know," he
snapped. He shoved the flagon along the table toward Stark.
Stark helped himself. The wine was warm and sweet on his tongue. He
drank slowly, sitting relaxed and patient while the others smoked
nervously or rose to pace up and down.
Stark wondered what, or who, they were waiting for. But he did not ask.
Time went by.