Straight into the square of the slave market the caravan came, and the
people pressed back against the walls to make way for them. Stamping of
padded hoofs on the stones, ring and clash of harness, brave glitter
of spears and the great two-handed broadswords of the Drylands, with
drumbeats to shake the heart and the savage cry of the pipes to set
the blood leaping. Stark could not restrain an appreciative thrill in
himself.
The advance guard reached the slave block. Then, with deafening
abruptness, the drummers crossed their sticks and the pipers ceased,
and there was utter silence in the square.
It lasted for almost a minute, and then from every barbarian throat the
name of Kynon roared out until the stones of the city echoed with it.
A man leaped from the back of his mount to the block, standing at its
outer edge where all could see, his hands flung up.
"I greet you, my brothers!"
And the cheering went on.
Stark studied Kynon, surprised that he was so young. He had expected a
gray-bearded prophet, and instead, here was a brawny-shouldered man of
war standing as tall as himself.
Kynon's eyes were a bright, compelling blue, and his face was the face
of a young eagle. His voice had deep music in it--the kind of voice
that can sway crowds to madness.
Stark looked from him to the rapt faces of the people--even the
Valkisians had caught the mood--and thought that Kynon was the most
dangerous man he had ever seen. This tawny-haired barbarian in his kilt
of bronze-bossed leather was already half a god.
Kynon shouted to the captain of his warriors, "Bring the captive
and the old man!" Then he turned again to the crowd, urging them
to silence. When at last the square was still, his voice rang
challengingly across it.
"There are still those who doubt me. Therefore I have come to Valkis,
and this day--now!--I will show proof that I have not lied!"
A roar and a mutter from the crowd. Kynon's men were lifting to the
block a tottering ancient so bowed with years that he could barely
stand, and a youth of Terran stock. The boy was in chains. The old
man's eyes burned, and he looked at the boy beside him with a terrible
joy.
Stark settled down to watch. The litter with the curtains of crimson
silk was now beside the block. A girl, a Valkisian, stood beside it,
looking up. It seemed to Stark that her green eyes rested on Kynon with
a smouldering anger.
He glanced away from the serving girl, and saw that the curtains were
partly open. A woman lay on the cushions within. He could not see much
of her, except that her hair was like dark flame and she was smiling,
looking at the old man and the naked boy. Then her glance, very dark in
the shadows of the litter, shifted away and Stark followed it and saw
Delgaun. Every muscle of Delgaun's body was drawn taut, and he seemed
unable to look away from the woman in the litter.
Stark smiled, very slightly. The outlanders were cynically absorbed
in what was going on. The crowd had settled again to that silent,
breathless tension. The sun blazed down out of the empty sky. The dust
blew, and the wind was sharp with the smell of living flesh.
The old man reached out and touched the boy's smooth shoulder, and his
gums showed bluish as he laughed.
Kynon was speaking again.
"There are still those who doubt me, I say! Those who scoffed when I
said that I possessed the ancient secret of the Ramas of long ago--the
secret by which one man's mind may be transferred into another's body.
But none of you after today will doubt that I hold that secret!
"I, myself, am not a Rama." He glanced down along his powerful frame,
half-consciously flexing his muscles, and laughed. "Why should I be a
Rama? I have no need, as yet, for the Sending-on of Minds!"
Answering laughter, half ribald, from the crowd.
"No," said Kynon, "I am not a Rama. I am a man like you. Like you, I
have no wish to grow old, and in the end, to die."
He swung abruptly to the old man.
"You, Grandfather! Would you not wish to be young again--to ride out to
battle, to take the woman of your choice?"
The old man wailed, "Yes! Yes!" and his gaze dwelt hungrily upon the
boy.
"And you shall be!" The strength of a god rang in Kynon's voice. He
turned again to the crowd and cried out,
"For years I suffered in the desert alone, searching for the lost
secret of the Ramas. And I found it, my brothers! I hold their ancient
power. I alone--in these two hands I hold it, and with it I shall begin
a new era for our Dryland races!
"There will be fighting, yes. There will be bloodshed. But when that is
over and the men of Kesh and Shun are free from their ancient bondage
of thirst and the men of the Low-Canals have regained their own--then
I shall give new life, unending life, to all who have followed me.
The aged and lamed and wounded can choose new bodies from among the
captives. There will be no more age, no more sickness, no more death!"
A rippling, shivering sigh from the crowd. Eyeballs gleaming in the
bitter light, mouths open on the hunger that is nearest to the human
soul.
"Lest anyone still doubt my promise," said Kynon, "watch. Watch--and I
will show you!"
They watched. Not stirring, hardly breathing, they watched.
* * * * *
The drums struck up a slow and solemn beat. The captain of the
warriors, with an escort of six men, marched to the litter and took
from the woman's hands a bundle wrapped in silks. Bearing it as though
it were precious beyond belief, he came to the block and lifted it up,
and Kynon took it from him.
The silken wrappings fluttered loose, fell away. And in Kynon's hands
gleamed two crystal crowns and a shining rod.
He held them high, the sunlight glancing in cold fire from the crystal.
"Behold!" he said. "The Crowns of the Ramas!"