The Firebird smiled. And Nathan moved slowly towards her. It was
incredible that such evil as he had heard of the Firebird could have
come out of such beauty.
"Perhaps you shall know who I am some day. For now, our agreement does
not call for that. Would you mind pocketing your flame lance before we
go on?"
Nathan realized his hand still gripped the weapon and it was trained on
the girl. It would take only a squeeze of his finger to erase her evil--
"Better not try it," she warned, and the smile did not leave her lips.
He looked down at her hand. Her own weapon was trained with equal
sureness upon him.
Instinctively, then, he knew that all the stories about the fabulous
quick draw of the Firebird were true. If he so much as thought of
killing her, her finger would squeeze the trigger of her flame lance a
thousand times quicker than his.
He pocketed the weapon slowly and smiled at her.
"How do we get out?" he said. "Is the passage blocked?"
"Completely," Firebird said. "Or else the gentlemen who were so anxious
to meet you here would have arrived by now."
"You planted the explosive?"
"Yes. I wanted our interview in private, not amidst a battle."
"How do you know there is any other way out?"
"Your father and I built it long ago."
Nathan remained silent. Was it only some purposeful fiction, or had his
father actually been partners with Firebird?
She turned her back upon him and led the way out of the chamber by her
own mysterious radiance. He could draw his flame lance now, Nathan
thought. But it was only a thought. He wondered if he could ever seek
vengeance upon such beauty regardless of what she had done in the past.
There was a temptation almost stronger than vengeance now, a temptation
to see this whole affair all the way through--to find out the true
identity of the fabled Firebird and the secret of the Seven Jewels of
Chamar.
For a time they walked towards the blocked entrance, then they turned
abruptly aside into a narrow passage. The slim Firebird passed through
easily but for Nathan it was a tight squeeze that grew narrower as he
went.
A strangling sense of claustrophobia seized him. He pressed almost
frantically to get past the bottleneck. If this were a trap Firebird
could shoot before he could get a hand near a weapon.
Then he saw her waiting for him ahead in the larger chamber to which
the narrow passage led. She seemed to read his thoughts.
"Do you trust me now?"
"Does anyone really trust the Firebird--anyone on the nine worlds?"
The sudden sobering of her face was a terrible thing to see. She turned
away so hastily that Nathan barely saw the expression, but he saw
enough to know that there was weakness in her. She was not all iron
strength. He saw enough to know that the incredible, storied Firebird
had no friend in all the System and he knew what that fact meant to her.