"Because of my father. I will tell you all I know, which is little
enough. Malthor has been slaver to the Lhari for a long time. There are
a number of them among the captains of Shuruun, but that is a thing
that is never spoken of--so I, his daughter, could only guess. I was
sure of it when he sent me after you."
She laughed, a bitter sound. "Now I'm here, with the collar of the Lost
Ones on my neck. But Malthor is here, too." She laughed again, ugly
laughter to come from a young mouth. Then she looked at Stark, and her
hand reached out timidly to touch his hair in what was almost a caress.
Her eyes were wide, and soft, and full of tears.
"Why didn't you go into the swamps when I warned you?"
Stark answered stolidly, "Too late to worry about that now." Then, "You
say Malthor is here, a slave?"
"Yes." Again, that look of wonder and admiration in her eyes. "I don't
know what you said or did to the Lhari, but the Lord Egil came down in
a black rage and cursed my father for a bungling fool because he could
not hold you. My father whined and made excuses, and all would have
been well--only his curiosity got the better of him and he asked the
Lord Egil what had happened. You were like a wild beast, Malthor said,
and he hoped you had not harmed the Lady Varra, as he could see from
Egil's wounds that there had been trouble.
"The Lord Egil turned quite purple. I thought he was going to fall in a
fit."
"Yes," said Stark. "That was the wrong thing to say." The ludicrous
side of it struck him, and he was suddenly roaring with laughter.
"Malthor should have kept his mouth shut!"
"Egil called his guard and ordered them to take Malthor. And when he
realized what had happened, Malthor turned on me, trying to say that it
was all my fault, that I let you escape."
Stark stopped laughing.
Her voice went on slowly, "Egil seemed quite mad with fury. I have
heard that the Lhari are all mad, and I think it is so. At any rate, he
ordered me taken too, for he wanted to stamp Malthor's seed into the
mud forever. So we are here."
There was a long silence. Stark could think of no word of comfort, and
as for hope, he had better wait until he was sure he could at least
raise his head. Egil might have damaged him permanently, out of spite.
In fact, he was surprised he wasn't dead.
He glanced again at the collar on Zareth's neck. Slave. Slave to the
Lhari, in the city of the Lost Ones.
What the devil did they do with slaves, at the bottom of the sea?
The heavy gases conducted sound remarkably well, except for an odd
property of diffusion which made it seem that a voice came from
everywhere at once. Now, all at once, Stark became aware of a dull
clamor of voices drifting towards him.
He tried to see, and Zareth turned his head carefully so that he might.
The Lost Ones were returning from whatever work it was they did.
* * * * *
Out of the dim red murk beyond the open door they swam, into the long,
long vastness of the hall that was filled with the same red murk,
moving slowly, their white bodies trailing wakes of sullen flame. The
host of the damned drifting through a strange red-litten hell, weary
and without hope.
One by one they sank onto pallets laid in rows on the black stone
floor, and lay there, utterly exhausted, their pale hair lifting and
floating with the slow eddies of the sea. And each one wore a collar.
One man did not lie down. He came toward Stark, a tall barbarian who
drew himself with great strokes of his arms so that he was wrapped in
wheeling sparks. Stark knew his face.
"Helvi," he said, and smiled in welcome.
"Brother!"
Helvi crouched down--a great handsome boy he had been the time Stark
saw him, but he was a man now, with all the laughter turned to grim
deep lines around his mouth and the bones of his face standing out like
granite ridges.
"Brother," he said again, looking at Stark through a glitter of
unashamed tears. "Fool." And he cursed Stark savagely because he had
come to Shuruun to look for an idiot who had gone the same way, and was
already as good as dead.
"Would you have followed me?" asked Stark.
"But I am only an ignorant child of the swamps," said Helvi. "You come
from space, you know the other worlds, you can read and write--you
should have better sense!"
Stark grinned. "And I'm still an ignorant child of the rocks. So we're
two fools together. Where is Tobal?"
Tobal was Helvi's brother, who had broken tabu and looked for refuge
in Shuruun. Apparently he had found peace at last, for Helvi shook his
head.
"A man cannot live too long under the sea. It is not enough merely to
breath and eat. Tobal over-ran his time, and I am close to the end of
mine." He held up his hand and then swept it down sharply, watching the
broken fires dance along his arms.
"The mind breaks before the body," said Helvi casually, as though it
were a matter of no importance.
Zareth spoke. "Helvi has guarded you each period while the others
slept."
"And not I alone," said Helvi. "The little one stood with me."
"Guarded me!" said Stark. "Why?"
For answer, Helvi gestured toward a pallet not far away. Malthor lay
there, his eyes half open and full of malice, the fresh scar livid on
his cheek.
"He feels," said Helvi, "that you should not have fought upon his ship."
Stark felt an inward chill of horror. To lie here helpless, watching
Malthor come toward him with open fingers reaching for his helpless
throat....
He made a passionate effort to move, and gave up, gasping. Helvi
grinned.
"Now is the time I should wrestle you, Stark for I never could throw
you before." He gave Stark's head a shake, very gentle for all its
apparent roughness. "You'll be throwing me again. Sleep now, and don't
worry."
He settled himself to watch, and presently in spite of himself Stark
slept, with Zareth curled at his feet like a little dog.
There was no time down there in the heart of the Red Sea. No daylight,
no dawn, no space of darkness. No winds blew, no rain nor storm broke
the endless silence. Only the lazy currents whispered by on their way
to nowhere, and the red sparks danced, and the great hall waited,
remembering the past.
Stark waited, too. How long he never knew, but he was used to waiting.
He had learned his patience on the knees of the great mountains whose
heads lift proudly into open space to look at the Sun, and he had
absorbed their own contempt for time.
Little by little, life returned to his body. A mongrel guard came now
and again to examine him, pricking Stark's flesh with his knife to test
the reaction, so that Stark should not malinger.
He reckoned without Stark's control. The Earthman bore his prodding
without so much as a twitch until his limbs were completely his own
again. Then he sprang up and pitched the man half the length of the
hall, turning over and over, yelling with startled anger.
At the next period of labour, Stark was driven with the rest out into
the City of the Lost Ones.