Larrabee sighed. "No. No, I suppose you're not. After all, you're no
Earthman, really, except for an accident of blood. Where are you going?"
"I don't know. Away from Venus, but I don't know yet where."
Larrabee's dark eyes surveyed him shrewdly. "'A restless, cold-eyed
tiger of a man', that's what Varra said. He's lost something, she said.
He'll look for it all his life, and never find it."
After that there was silence. The red fog wrapped them, and the wind
rose and sent them scudding before it.
Then, faint and far off, there came a moaning wail, a sound like broken
chanting that turned Stark's flesh cold.
All on board heard it. They listened, utterly silent, their eyes wide,
and somewhere a woman began to weep.
Stark shook himself. "It's only the wind," he said roughly, "in the
rocks by the strait."
The sound rose and fell, weary, infinitely mournful, and the part of
Stark that was N'Chaka said that he lied. It was not the wind that
keened so sadly through the mists. It was the voices of the Lost Ones
who were forever lost--Zareth, sleeping in the hall of kings, and all
the others who would never leave the dreaming city and the forest,
never find the light again.
Stark shivered, and turned away, watching the leaping fires of the
strait sweep toward them.