"There will be no killing. You would be of no use to me dead. But alive
you can serve me. That is why you were spared."
"Serve you--like _them_?" He swung to point to the waiting Korins, but
the Korins were not waiting now, they were closing in on him, their
hands reaching for him.
Trevor struck out at them. He had a fleeting thought of how weird this
battle of his with the Korins must look, as they struck and staggered
on the stone paving beneath the looming, watching thing of stone.
But even as he had that thought, the moment of struggle ended. An
imperious command hit his brain, and black oblivion closed down upon
him like the sudden clenching of a fist.
V
Darkness. He was lost in it, and he was not himself any more. He fled
through the darkness, groping, crying out for something that was gone.
And a voice answered him, a voice that he did not want to hear....
Darkness. Dreams.
Dawn, high on the blazing mountains. He stood in the city, watching the
light grow bright and pitiless, watching it burn on the upper walls
and then slip downward into the streets, casting heavy shadows in the
openings of door and window, so that the houses looked like skulls
with empty eye-holes and gaping mouths. The buildings no longer seemed
too big. He walked between them, and when he came to steps he climbed
them easily, and the window ledges were no higher than his head. He
knew these buildings. He looked at each one as he passed, naming it,
remembering with a long, long memory.
The hawks came down to him, the faithful servants with the sun-stones
in their brows. He stroked their pliant necks, and they hissed softly
with pleasure, but their shallow minds were empty of everything but
that vague sensation. He passed on through the familiar streets, and
in them nothing stirred. All through the day from dawn to sunset, and
in the darkness that came afterward, nothing stirred, and there was a
silence among the stones.
He could not endure the city. His time was not yet, though the first
subtle signs of age had touched him. But he went down into the
catacombs and took his place with those others who were waiting and
could still speak to him with their minds, so that he should not be
quite alone with the silence.
The years went by, leaving no traces of themselves in the unchanging
gloom of the mortuary halls.
One by one those last few minds were stilled until all were gone. And
by that time age had chained him where he was, unable to rise and go
again into the city where he had been young, the youngest of all ...
Shannach, they had named him--The Last.
So he waited, alone. And only one who was kin to the mountains could
have borne that waiting in the place of the dead.
Then, in a burst of flame and thunder, new life came into the valley.
Human life. Soft, frail, receptive life, intelligent, unprotected,
possessed of violent and bewildering passions. Very carefully, taking
its time, the mind of Shannach reached out and gathered them in.
Some of the men were more violent than the others. Shannach saw their
emotions in patterns of scarlet against the dark of his inner mind.
They had already made themselves masters, and a number of these frail
sensitive brains had snapped out swiftly because of them. "These I will
take for my own," thought Shannach. "Their mind-patterns are crude, but
strong, and I am interested in death."
There had been a surgeon aboard the ship but he was dead. However,
there was no need of a surgeon for what was about to be done. When
Shannach had finished talking to the men he had chosen, telling them
of the sun-stones, telling them the truth, but not all of it--when
those men had eagerly agreed to the promise of power--Shannach took
complete control. And the clumsy convict hands that moved now with
such exquisite skill were as much his instruments as the scalpels of
the dead surgeon that they wielded, making the round incision and the
delicate cutting of the bone.
_Who was the man that lay there, quiet under the knife? Who were the
ones that bent above him, with the strange stones in their brows?
Names. There are names and I know them. Closer, closer. I know that man
who lies there with blood between his eyes...._
Trevor screamed. Someone slapped him across the face, viciously and
with intent. He screamed again, fighting, clawing, still blinded by
the visions and the dark mists, and that voice that he dreaded so much
spoke gently in his mind, "It's all over, Trevor. It is done."
The hard hand slapped him again, and a rough human voice said harshly,
"Wake up. Wake up, damn it!"
He woke. He was in the middle of a vast room, crouched down in the
attitude of a fighter, shivering, sweating, his hands outstretched and
grasping nothing. He must have sprung there, half unconscious, from
the tumbled pallet of skins against the wall. Galt was watching him.
"Welcome, Earthman. How does it feel to be one of the masters?"
Trevor stared at him. A burning flood of light fell in through the tall
windows so high above his head, setting the sun-stone ablaze between
the Korin's sullen brows. Trevor's gaze fixed on that single point of
brilliance.
"Oh, yes," said Galt. "It's true."
It struck Trevor with an ugly shock that Galt's lips had not moved, and
that he had made no audible sound.
"The stones give us a limited ability," Galt went on, still without
speaking aloud. "Not like His, of course. But we can control the hawks,
and exchange ideas between us when we want to if the range isn't too
far. Naturally, our minds are open to Him any time he wants to pry."
"There's no pain," Trevor whispered, desperately trying to make the
thing not be so. "My head doesn't ache."
"Of course not. He takes care of that."
_Shannach? If it isn't so, how do I know that name? And that dream,
that endless nightmare in the catacombs._
Galt winced. "We don't use that name. He doesn't like it." He looked at
Trevor. "What's the matter, Earthman? Why so green? You were laughing
once, remember? Where's your sense of humor now?"
He caught Trevor abruptly by the shoulders and turned him around so
that he faced a great sheet of polished glassy substance set into the
wall. A mirror for giants, reflecting the whole huge room, reflecting
the small dwarfed figures of the men.
"Go on," said Galt, pushing Trevor ahead of him. "Take a look."
Trevor shook off the Korin's grasp. He moved forward by himself, close
to the mirror. He set his hands against the chill surface and stared at
what he saw there. And it was true.
Between his brows a sun-stone winked and glittered. And his face, the
familiar, normal, not-too-bad face he had been used to all his life,
was transformed into something monstrous and unnatural, a goblin mask
with a third, and evil eye.
A coldness crept into his heart and bones. He backed away a little from
the mirror, his hands moving blindly upward, slowly toward the stone
that glistened between his brows. His mouth was twisted like a child's,
and two tears rolled down his cheeks.
His fingers touched the stone. And then the anger came. He sank his
nails into his forehead, clawing at the hard stones, not caring if he
died after he had torn it out.
Galt watched him. His lips smiled but his eyes were hateful.
* * * * *
Blood ran down the sides of Trevor's nose. The sun-stone was still
there. He moaned and thrust his nails in deeper, and Shannach let him
go until he had produced one stab of agony that cut his head in two
and nearly dropped him. Then Shannach sent in the full force of his
mind. Not in anger, for he felt none, and not in cruelty, for he was no
more cruel than the mountain he was kin to, but simply because it was
necessary.
Trevor felt that cold and lonely power roll down on him like an
avalanche. He braced himself to meet it, but it broke his defenses,
crushed them, made them nothing, and moved onward against the inmost
citadel of his mind.
In that reeling, darkened fortress all that was wholly Trevor crouched
and clung to its armament of rage, remembering dimly that once, in a
narrow canyon, it had driven back this enemy and broken free. And then
some crude animal instinct far below the level of conscious thought
warned him not to press the battle now, to bury his small weapon and
wait, letting this last redoubt of which he was yet master go untouched
and perhaps unnoticed by his captor.
Trevor let his hands drop limply and his mind go slack. The cold black
tide of power paused, and then he felt it slide away, withdrawing from
those threatened walls. Out of the edges of it, Shannach spoke.
"Your mind is tougher than these valley-bred Korins. They're well
conditioned, but you--you remember that you defied me once. The contact
was imperfect then. It is not imperfect now. Remember that, too,
Trevor."
Trevor drew in a long, unsteady breath. He whispered, "What do you want
of me?"
"Go and see the ship. Your mind tells me that it understands these
things. See if it can be made to fly again."