The distant thought-voice of the seven spoke, and this time the question
was addressed to Ciara.
Stark saw her face. She did not know the Mars he knew, but she had
memories of her own--the mountain-valleys of Mekh, the moors, the snowy
gorges. She looked at the shining ones in their high seats, and said,
"If I take that sword, it will be to use it against you as Ban Cruach
did!"
Stark knew that the seven had understood the thought behind her words.
He felt that they were amused.
"The secret of that sword was lost a million years ago, the day Ban
Cruach died. Neither you nor anyone now knows how to use it as he did.
But the sword's radiations of warmth still lock us here.
"We cannot approach that sword, for its vibrations of heat slay us if we
do. But you warm-bodied ones can approach it. And you will do so, and
take it from its place. _One of you will take it!_"
They were very sure of that.
"We can see, a little way, into your evil minds. Much we do not
understand. But--the mind of the large man is full of the woman's image,
and the mind of the woman turns to him. Also, there is a link between
the large man and the small man, less strong, but strong enough."
The thought-voice of the seven finished, "The large man will take away
the sword for us because he must--to save the other two."
Ciara turned to Stark. "They cannot force you, Stark. Don't let them. No
matter what they do to me, don't let them!"
Balin stared at her with a certain wonder. "You would die, to protect
Kushat?"
"Not Kushat alone, though its people too are human," she said, almost
angrily. "There are my red wolves--a wild pack, but my own. And others."
She looked at Balin. "What do _you_ say? Your life against the
Norlands?"
Balin made an effort to lift his head as high as hers, and the red jewel
flashed in his ear. He was a man crushed by the falling of his world,
and terrified by what his mad passion had led him into, here beyond the
Gates of Death. But he was not afraid to die.
He said so, and even Ciara knew that he spoke the truth.
But the seven were not dismayed. Stark knew that when their
thought-voice whispered in his mind,
"It is not death alone you humans have to fear, but the manner of your
dying. You shall see that, before you choose."
* * * * *
Swiftly, silently, those of the ice-folk who had borne the captives into
the city came up from behind, where they had stood withdrawn and
waiting. And one of them bore a crystal rod like a sceptre, with a spark
of ugly purple burning in the globed end.
Stark leaped to put himself between them and Ciara. He struck out,
raging, and because he was almost as quick as they, he caught one of the
slim luminous bodies between his hands.
The utter coldness of that alien flesh burned his hands as frost will
burn. Even so, he clung on, snarling, and saw the tendrils writhe and
stiffen as though in pain.
Then, from the crystal rod, a thread of darkness spun itself to touch
his brain with silence, and the cold that lies between the worlds.
He had no memory of being carried once more through the shimmering
streets of that elfin, evil city, back to the stupendous well of the
tower, and up along the spiral path of ice that soared those dizzy
hundreds of feet from bedrock to the glooming crystal globe. But when he
again opened his eyes, he was lying on the wide stone ledge at
ice-level.
Beside him was the arch that led outside. Close above his head was the
control bank that he had seen before.
Ciara and Balin were there also, on the ledge. They leaned stiffly
against the stone wall beside the control bank, and facing them was a
squat, round mechanism from which projected a sort of wheel of crystal
rods.
Their bodies were strangely rigid, but their eyes and minds were awake.
Terribly awake. Stark saw their eyes, and his heart turned within him.
Ciara looked at him. She could not speak, but she had no need to. _No
matter what they do to me...._
She had not feared the swordsmen of Kushat. She had not feared her red
wolves, when he unmasked her in the square. She was afraid now. But she
warned him, ordered him not to save her.
_They cannot force you. Stark! Don't let them._
And Balin, too, pleaded with him for Kushat.
They were not alone on the ledge. The ice-folk clustered there, and out
upon the flying spiral pathway, on the narrow bridges and the spans of
fragile ice, they stood in hundreds watching, eyeless, faceless, their
bodies drawn in rainbow lines across the dimness of the shaft.
Stark's mind could hear the silent edges of their laughter. Secret,
knowing laughter, full of evil, full of triumph, and Stark was filled
with a corroding terror.
He tried to move, to crawl toward Ciara standing like a carven image in
her black mail. He could not.
Again her fierce, proud glance met his. And the silent laughter of the
ice-folk echoed in his mind, and he thought it very strange that in this
moment, now, he should realize that there had never been another woman
like her on all of the worlds of the Sun.
The fear she felt was not for herself. It was for him.
Apart from the multitudes of the ice-folk, the group of seven stood upon
the ledge. And now their thought-voice spoke to Stark, saying,
"Look about you. Behold the men who have come before you through the
Gates of Death!"
Stark raised his eyes to where their slender fingers pointed, and saw
the icy galleries around the tower, saw more clearly the icy statues in
them that he had only glimpsed before.
* * * * *
Men, set like images in the galleries. Men whose bodies were sheathed in
a glittering mail of ice, sealing them forever. Warriors, nobles,
fanatics and thieves--the wanderers of a million years who had dared to
enter this forbidden valley, and had remained forever.
He saw their faces, their tortured eyes wide open, their features frozen
in the agony of a slow and awful death.
"They refused us," the seven whispered. "They would not take away the
sword. And so they died, as this woman and this man will die, unless you
choose to save them.
"We will show you, human, how they died!"
One of the ice-folk bent and touched the squat, round mechanism that
faced Balin and Ciara. Another shifted the pattern of control on the
master-bank.
The wheel of crystal rods on that squat mechanism began to turn. The
rods blurred, became a disc that spun faster and faster.
High above in the top of the tower the great globe brooded, shrouded in
its cloud of shimmering darkness. The disc became a whirling blur. The
glooming shadow of the globe deepened, coalesced. It began to lengthen
and descend, stretching itself down toward the spinning disc.
The crystal rods of the mechanism drank the shadow in. And out of that
spinning blur there came a subtle weaving of threads of darkness, a
gossamer curtain winding around Ciara and Balin so that their outlines
grew ghostly and the pallor of their flesh was as the pallor of snow at
night.
And still Stark could not move.
The veil of darkness began to sparkle faintly. Stark watched it, watched
the chill motes brighten, watched the tracery of frost whiten over
Ciara's mail, touch Balin's dark hair with silver.
Frost. Bright, sparkling, beautiful, a halo of frost around their
bodies. A dust of splintered diamond across their faces, an aureole of
brittle light to crown their heads.
Frost. Flesh slowly hardening in marbly whiteness, as the cold slowly
increased. And yet their eyes still lived, and saw, and understood.
The thought-voice of the seven spoke again.
"You have only minutes now to decide! Their bodies cannot endure too
much, and live again. Behold their eyes, and how they suffer!
"Only minutes, human! Take away the sword of Ban Cruach! Open for us the
Gates of Death, and we will release these two, alive."
Stark felt again the flashing stab of pain along his nerves, as one of
the shining creatures moved behind him. Life and feeling came back into
his limbs.
He struggled to his feet. The hundreds of the ice-folk on the bridges
and galleries watched him in an eager silence.
He did not look at them. His eyes were on Ciara's. And now, her eyes
pleaded.
"Don't, Stark! Don't barter the life of the Norlands for me!"
The thought-voice beat at Stark, cutting into his mind with cruel
urgency.
"Hurry, human! They are already beginning to die. Take away the sword,
and let them live!"
Stark turned. He cried out, in a voice that made the icy bridges
tremble:
"I will take the sword!"
He staggered out, then. Out through the archway, across the ice, toward
the distant cairn that blocked the Gates of Death.