Across the glowing ice of the valley Stark went at a stumbling run that
grew swifter and more sure as his cold-numbed body began to regain its
functions. And behind him, pouring out of the tower to watch, came the
shining ones.
They followed after him, gliding lightly. He could sense their
excitement, the cold, strange ecstasy of triumph. He knew that already
they were thinking of the great towers of stone rising again above the
Norlands, the crystal cities still and beautiful under the ice, all
vestige of the ugly citadels of man gone and forgotten.
The seven spoke once more, a warning.
"If you turn toward us with the sword, the woman and the man will die.
And you will die as well. For neither you nor any other can now use the
sword as a weapon of offense."
Stark ran on. He was thinking then only of Ciara, with the
frost-crystals gleaming on her marble flesh and her eyes full of mute
torment.
The cairn loomed up ahead, dark and high. It seemed to Stark that the
brooding figure of Ban Cruach watched him coming with those shadowed
eyes beneath the rusty helm. The great sword blazed between those dead,
frozen hands.
[Illustration: _The great sword blazed between those dead, frozen
hands...._]
The ice-folk had slowed their forward rush. They stopped and waited,
well back from the cairn.
Stark reached the edge of tumbled rock. He felt the first warm flare of
the force-waves in his blood, and slowly the chill began to creep out
from his bones. He climbed, scrambling upward over the rough stones of
the cairn.
Abruptly, then, at Ban Cruach's feet, he slipped and fell. For a second
it seemed that he could not move.
His back was turned toward the ice-folk. His body was bent forward, and
shielded so, his hands worked with feverish speed.
From his cloak he tore a strip of cloth. From the iron boss he took the
glittering lens, the talisman of Ban Cruach. Stark laid the lens against
his brow, and bound it on.
_The remembered shock, the flood and sweep of memories that were not his
own. The mind of Ban Cruach thundering its warning, its hard-won
knowledge of an ancient, epic war...._
He opened his own mind wide to receive those memories. Before he had
fought against them. Now he knew that they were his one small chance in
this swift gamble with death. Two things only of his own he kept firm in
that staggering tide of another man's memories. Two names--Ciara and
Balin.
He rose up again. And now his face had a strange look, a curious
duality. The features had not changed, but somehow the lines of the
flesh had altered subtly, so that it was almost as though the old
unconquerable king himself had risen again in battle.
He mounted the last step or two and stood before Ban Cruach. A shudder
ran through him, a sort of gathering and settling of the flesh, as
though Stark's being had accepted the stranger within it. His eyes, cold
and pale as the very ice that sheathed the valley, burned with a cruel
light.
He reached and took the sword, out of the frozen hands of Ban Cruach.
As though it were his own, he knew the secret of the metal rings that
bound its hilt, below the ball of crystal. The savage throb of the
invisible radiation beat in his quickening flesh. He was warm again, his
blood running swiftly, his muscles sure and strong. He touched the rings
and turned them.
The fan-shaped aura of force that had closed the Gates of Death narrowed
in, and as it narrowed it leaped up from the blade of the sword in a
tongue of pale fire, faintly shimmering, made visible now by the full
focus of its strength.
Stark felt the wave of horror bursting from the minds of the ice-folk as
they perceived what he had done. And he laughed.
His bitter laughter rang harsh across the valley as he turned to face
them, and he heard in his brain the shuddering, silent shriek that went
up from all that gathered company....
"_Ban Cruach! Ban Cruach has returned!_"
They had touched his mind. They knew.
* * * * *
He laughed again, and swept the sword in a flashing arc, and watched the
long bright blade of force strike out more terrible than steel, against
the rainbow bodies of the shining ones.
They fell. Like flowers under a scythe they fell, and all across the ice
the ones who were yet untouched turned about in their hundreds and fled
back toward the tower.
Stark came leaping down the cairn, the talisman of Ban Cruach bound upon
his brow, the sword of Ban Cruach blazing in his hand.
He swung that awful blade as he ran. The force-beam that sprang from it
cut through the press of creatures fleeing before him, hampered by their
own numbers as they crowded back through the archway.
He had only a few short seconds to do what he had to do.
Rushing with great strides across the ice, spurning the withered bodies
of the dead.... And then, from the glooming darkness that hovered around
the tower of stone, the black cold beam struck down.
Like a coiling whip it lashed him. The deadly numbness invaded the cells
of his flesh, ached in the marrow of his bones. The bright force of the
sword battled the chill invaders, and a corrosive agony tore at Stark's
inner body where the antipathetic radiations waged war.
His steps faltered. He gave one hoarse cry of pain, and then his limbs
failed and he went heavily to his knees.
Instinct only made him cling to the sword. Waves of blinding anguish
racked him. The coiling lash of darkness encircled him, and its touch
was the abysmal cold of outer space, striking deep into his heart.
_Hold the sword close, hold it closer, like a shield. The pain is great,
but I will not die unless I drop the sword._
Ban Cruach the mighty had fought this fight before.
Stark raised the sword again, close against his body. The fierce pulse
of its brightness drove back the cold. Not far, for the freezing touch
was very strong. But far enough so that he could rise again and stagger
on.
The dark force of the tower writhed and licked about him. He could not
escape it. He slashed it in a blind fury with the blazing sword, and
where the forces met a flicker of lightning leaped in the air, but it
would not be beaten back.
He screamed at it, a raging cat-cry that was all Stark, all primitive
fury at the necessity of pain. And he forced himself to run, to drag his
tortured body faster across the ice. _Because Ciara is dying, because
the dark cold wants me to stop...._
The ice-folk jammed and surged against the archway, in a panic hurry to
take refuge far below in their many-levelled city. He raged at them,
too. They were part of the cold, part of the pain. Because of them Ciara
and Balin were dying. He sent the blade of force lancing among them, his
hatred rising full tide to join the hatred of Ban Cruach that lodged in
his mind.
Stab and cut and slash with the long terrible beam of brightness. They
fell and fell, the hideous shining folk, and Stark sent the light of Ban
Cruach's weapon sweeping through the tower itself, through the openings
that were like windows in the stone.
Again and again, stabbing through those open slits as he ran. And
suddenly the dark beam of force ceased to move. He tore out of it, and
it did not follow him, remaining stationary as though fastened to the
ice.
The battle of forces left his flesh. The pain was gone. He sped on to
the tower.
He was close now. The withered bodies lay in heaps before the arch. The
last of the ice-folk had forced their way inside. Holding the sword
level like a lance, Stark leaped in through the arch, into the tower.
* * * * *
The shining ones were dead where the destroying warmth had touched
them. The flying spiral ribbons of ice were swept clean of them, the
arching bridges and the galleries of that upper part of the tower.
They were dead along the ledge, under the control bank. They were dead
across the mechanism that spun the frosty doom around Ciara and Balin.
The whirling disc still hummed.
Below, in that stupendous well, the crowding ice-folk made a seething
pattern of color on the narrow ways. But Stark turned his back on them
and ran along the ledge, and in him was the heavy knowledge that he had
come too late.
The frost had thickened around Ciara and Balin. It encrusted them like
stiffened lace, and now their flesh was overlaid with a diamond shell of
ice.
Surely they could not live!
He raised the sword to smite down at the whirring disc, to smash it, but
there was no need. When the full force of that concentrated beam struck
it, meeting the focus of shadow that it held, there was a violent flare
of light and a shattering of crystal. The mechanism was silent.
The glooming veil was gone from around the ice-shelled man and woman.
Stark forgot the creatures in the shaft below him. He turned the blazing
sword full upon Ciara and Balin.
It would not affect the thin covering of ice. If the woman and the man
were dead, it would not affect their flesh, any more than it had Ban
Cruach's. But if they lived, if there was still a spark, a flicker
beneath that frozen mail, the radiation would touch their blood with
warmth, start again the pulse of life in their bodies.
He waited, watching Ciara's face. It was still as marble, and as white.
Something--instinct, or the warning mind of Ban Cruach that had learned
a million years ago to beware the creatures of the ice--made him glance
behind him.
Stealthy, swift and silent, up the winding ways they came. They had
guessed that he had forgotten them in his anxiety. The sword was turned
away from them now, and if they could take him from behind, stun him
with the chill force of the sceptre-like rods they carried....
He slashed them with the sword. He saw the flickering beam go down and
down the shaft, saw the bodies fall like drops of rain, rebounding here
and there from the flying spans and carrying the living with them.
He thought of the many levels of the city. He thought of all the
countless thousands that must inhabit them. He could hold them off in
the shaft as long as he wished if he had no other need for the sword.
But he knew that as soon as he turned his back they would be upon him
again, and if he should once fall....
He could not spare a moment, or a chance.
He looked at Ciara, not knowing what to do, and it seemed to him that
the sheathing frost had melted, just a little, around her face.
Desperately, he struck down again at the creatures in the shaft, and
then the answer came to him.
He dropped the sword. The squat, round mechanism was beside him, with
its broken crystal wheel. He picked it up.
It was heavy. It would have been heavy for two men to lift, but Stark
was a driven man. Grunting, swaying with the effort, he lifted it and
let it fall, out and down.
Like a thunderbolt it struck among those slender bridges, the spiderweb
of icy strands that spanned the shaft. Stark watched it go, and listened
to the brittle snapping of the ice, the final crashing of a million
shards at the bottom far below.
He smiled, and turned again to Ciara, picking up the sword.
* * * * *
It was hours later. Stark walked across the glowing ice of the valley,
toward the cairn. The sword of Ban Cruach hung at his side. He had taken
the talisman and replaced it in the boss, and he was himself again.
Ciara and Balin walked beside him. The color had come back into their
faces, but faintly, and they were still weak enough to be glad of
Stark's hands to steady them.
At the foot of the cairn they stopped, and Stark mounted it alone.
He looked for a long moment into the face of Ban Cruach. Then he took
the sword, and carefully turned the rings upon it so that the radiation
spread out as it had before, to close the Gates of Death.
Almost reverently, he replaced the sword in Ban Cruach's hands. Then he
turned and went down over the tumbled stones.
The shimmering darkness brooded still over the distant tower. Underneath
the ice, the elfin city still spread downward. The shining ones would
rebuild their bridges in the shaft, and go on as they had before,
dreaming their cold dreams of ancient power.
But they would not go out through the Gates of Death. Ban Cruach in his
rusty mail was still lord of the pass, the warder of the Norlands.
Stark said to the others, "Tell the story in Kushat. Tell it through the
Norlands, the story of Ban Cruach and why he guards the Gates of Death.
Men have forgotten. And they should not forget."
They went out of the valley then, the two men and the woman. They did
not speak again, and the way out through the pass seemed endless.
Some of Ciara's chieftains met them at the mouth of the pass above
Kushat. They had waited there, ashamed to return to the city without
her, but not daring to go back into the pass again. They had seen the
creatures of the valley, and they were still afraid.
They gave mounts to the three. They themselves walked behind Ciara, and
their heads were low with shame.
They came into Kushat through the riven gate, and Stark went with Ciara
to the King City, where she made Balin follow too.
"Your sister is there," she said. "I have had her cared for."
The city was quiet, with the sullen apathy that follows after battle.
The men of Mekh cheered Ciara in the streets. She rode proudly, but
Stark saw that her face was gaunt and strained.
He, too, was marked deep by what he had seen and done, beyond the Gates
of Death.
They went up into the castle.
Thanis took Balin into her arms, and wept. She had lost her first wild
fury, and she could look at Ciara now with a restrained hatred that had
a tinge almost of admiration.
"You fought for Kushat," she said, unwillingly, when she had heard the
story. "For that, at least, I can thank you."
She went to Stark then, and looked up at him. "Kushat, and my brother's
life...." She kissed him, and there were tears on her lips. But she
turned to Ciara with a bitter smile.
"No one can hold him, any more than the wind can be held. You will learn
that."
She went out then with Balin, and left Stark and Ciara alone, in the
chambers of the king.
* * * * *
Ciara said, "The little one is very shrewd." She unbuckled the hauberk
and let it fall, standing slim in her tunic of black leather, and walked
to the tall windows that looked out upon the mountains. She leaned her
head wearily against the stone.
"An evil day, an evil deed. And now I have Kushat to govern, with no
reward of power from beyond the Gates of Death. How man can be misled!"
Stark poured wine from the flagon and brought it to her. She looked at
him over the rim of the cup, with a certain wry amusement.
"The little one is shrewd, and she is right. I don't know that I can be
as wise as she.... Will you stay with me, Stark, or will you go?"
He did not answer at once, and she asked him, "What hunger drives you,
Stark? It is not conquest, as it was with me. What are you looking for
that you cannot find?"
He thought back across the years, back to the beginning--to the boy
N'Chaka who had once been happy with Old One and little Tika, in the
blaze and thunder and bitter frosts of a valley in the Twilight Belt of
Mercury. He remembered how all that had ended, under the guns of the
miners--the men who were his own kind.
He shook his head. "I don't know. It doesn't matter." He took her
between his two hands, feeling the strength and the splendor of her, and
it was oddly difficult to find words.
"I want to stay, Ciara. Now, this minute, I could promise that I would
stay forever. But I know myself. You belong here, you will make Kushat
your own. I don't. Someday I will go."
Ciara nodded. "My neck, also, was not made for chains, and one country
was too little to hold me. Very well, Stark. Let it be so."
She smiled, and let the wine-cup fall.