The desert had been a pleasant and kindly place. Stark looked back upon
it with longing. And yet this inferno of blazing rock was so like the
valleys of his boyhood that it did not occur to him to lie down and die.
They rested for a time in the sheltered crevice under a great leaning
slab of blood-red stone, moistening their swollen tongues with a few
drops of stinking water from the skin. At nightfall they drank the last
of it, but Berild would not let him throw the skin away.
Darkness, and a lunar silence. The chill air sucked the day's heat
out of the rocks and the iron frost came down, so that Stark and the
red-haired woman must keep moving or freeze.
Stark's mind grew clouded. He spoke from time to time, in a croaking
whisper, dropping back into the harsh mother-tongue of the Twilight
Belt. It seemed to him that he was hunting, as he had so many times
before, in the waterless places--for the blood of the great lizard
would save him from thirst.
But nothing lived in the Belly of Stones. Nothing, but the two who
crept and staggered across it under the low moons.
Berild fell, and could not rise again. Stark crouched beside her. Her
face stared up at him, white in the moonlight, her eyes burning and
strange.
"I will not die!" she whispered, not to him, but to the gods. "_I will
not die!_"
And she clawed the sand and the bitter rocks, dragging herself onward.
It was uncanny, the madness that she had for life.
Stark raised her up and carried her. His breath came in deep sobbing
gasps. After a while he, too, fell. He went on like a beast on all
fours, dragging the woman.
He knew dimly that he was climbing. There was a glimmering of dawn in
the sky. His hands slipped on a lip of sand and he went rolling down
a smooth slope. At length he stopped and lay on his back like a dead
thing.
The sun was high when consciousness returned to him. He saw Berild
lying near him and crawled to her, shaking her until her eyes opened.
Her hands moved feebly and her lips formed the same four words. _I will
not die._
Stark strained his eyes to the horizon, praying for a glimpse of
Sinharat, but there was nothing, only emptiness and sand. With great
difficulty he got the woman to her feet, supporting her.
He tried to tell her that they must go on, but he could no longer form
the words. He could only gesture and urge her forward, in the direction
of the city.