"Even if I tell you that Delgaun has set a trap for you at Kala's?"
"No. But I will thank you for your warning, Fianna."
He bent and kissed her, because she was very young and honest. Then he
turned and went on his way.
V
Night came swiftly. Stark left behind him the torches and the laughter
and the sounding harps, coming into the streets of the old city where
there was nothing but silence and the light of the low moons.
He saw the lower quays, great looming shapes of marble rounded and worn
by time, and went toward them. Presently he found that he was following
a faint but definite path, threaded between the ancient houses. It was
very still, so that the dry whisper of the drifting dust was audible.
He passed under the shadow of the quays, and turned into a broad way
that had once led up from the harbor. A little way ahead, on the other
side, he saw a tall building half fallen in ruin. Its windows were
shuttered, barred with light, and from it came the sound of voices and
a thin thread of music, very reedy and evil.
Stark approached it, slipping through the ragged shadows as though he
had no more weight to him than a drift of smoke. Once a door banged and
a man came out of Kala's and passed by, going down to Valkis. Stark saw
his face in the moonlight. It was the face of a beast, rather than a
man. He muttered to himself as he went, and once he laughed, and Stark
felt a loathing in him.
He waited until the sound of footsteps had died away. The ruined
houses gave no sign of danger. A lizard rustled between the stones, and
that was all. The moonlight lay bright and still on Kala's door.
Stark found a little shard of rock and tossed it, so that it made a
sharp snicking sound against the shadowed wall beyond him. Then he held
his breath, listening.
No one, nothing, stirred. Only the dry wind sighed in the empty houses.
Stark went out, across the open space, and nothing happened. He flung
open the door of Kala's dive.
Yellow light spilled out, and a choking wave of hot and stuffy air.
Inside, there were tall lamps with quartz lenses, each of which poured
down a beam of throbbing, gold-orange light. And in the little pools of
radiance, on filthy furs and cushions on the floor, lay men and women
whose faces were slack and bestial.
Stark realized now what secret vice Kala sold here. Shanga--the
going-back--the radiation that caused temporary artificial atavism and
let men wallow for a time in beasthood. It was supposed to have been
stamped out when the Lady Fand's dark Shanga ring had been destroyed.
But it still persisted, in places like this outside the law.
He looked for Freka, and recognized the tall barbarian. He was sprawled
under one of the Shanga-lamps, eyes closed, face brutish, growling and
twitching in sleep like the beast he had temporarily become.
A voice spoke from behind Stark's shoulder. "I am Kala. What do you
wish, Outlander?"
He turned. Kala might have been beautiful once, a thousand years ago as
you reckon sin. She wore still the sweet chiming bells in her hair, and
Stark thought of Fianna. The woman's ravaged face turned him sick. It
was like the reedy, piping music, woven out of the very heart of evil.
Yet her eyes were shrewd, and he knew that she had not missed his
searching look around the room, nor his interest in Freka. There was a
note of warning in her voice.
He did not want trouble, yet. Not until he found some hint of the trap
Fianna had told him of.