Stark shivered, a shallow rippling of the flesh that had nothing to do
with cold, and every muscle of his body came alive. Phobos plunged
downward. The moonlight dimmed and changed, and the plain was very
empty, very still.
"They will wait for darkness. They will have an hour or so, between
moonset and dawn."
Thanis muttered, "Dreams! Besides, I'm cold." She hesitated, and then
crept in under Balin's cloak. Stark had gone away from her. She watched
him sulkily where he leaned upon the stone. He might have been part of
it, as dark and unstirring.
Deimos sank low toward the west.
Stark turned his head, drawn inevitably to look toward the cliffs above
Kushat, soaring upward to blot out half the sky. Here, close under them,
they seemed to tower outward in a curving mass, like the last wave of
eternity rolling down, crested white with the ash of shattered worlds.
_I have stood beneath those cliffs before. I have felt them leaning down
to crush me, and I have been afraid._
He was still afraid. The mind that had poured its memories into that
crystal lens had been dead a million years, but neither time nor death
had dulled the terror that beset Ban Cruach in his journey through that
nightmare pass.
He looked into the black and narrow mouth of the Gates of Death,
cleaving the scarp like a wound, and the primitive ape-thing within him
cringed and moaned, oppressed with a sudden sense of fate.
He had come painfully across half a world, to crouch before the Gates of
Death. Some evil magic had let him see forbidden things, had linked his
mind in an unholy bond with the long-dead mind of one who had been half
a god. These evil miracles had not been for nothing. He would not be
allowed to go unscathed.
He drew himself up sharply then, and swore. He had left N'Chaka behind,
a naked boy running in a place of rocks and sun on Mercury. He had
become Eric John Stark, a man, and civilized. He thrust the senseless
premonition from him, and turned his back upon the mountains.
Deimos touched the horizon. A last gleam of reddish light tinged the
snow, and then was gone.
Thanis, who was half asleep, said with sudden irritation, "I do not
believe in your barbarians. I'm going home." She thrust Balin aside and
went away, down the steps.
The plain was now in utter darkness, under the faint, far Northern
stars.
Stark settled himself against the parapet. There was a sort of timeless
patience about him. Balin envied it. He would have liked to go with
Thanis. He was cold and doubtful, but he stayed.
Time passed, endless minutes of it, lengthening into what seemed hours.