Chapter V: There lay the woman!

Xaymar. Woman and death, the end of a madman's quest.

The great crystal globe that cased her rested atop a dais in the center of an echoing, high-roofed chamber. Pulsing, aglow with strange life, its radiance fought back the crypt's impinging gloom.

Haral swayed for a moment under the impact of the sight, his wounds forgotten. Excitement raced through him.

But Sark's men held him by either arm, and others penned him in front and behind, and Sark himself sat in the riding-chair mere feet away, his hand never straying from the cymosynthesizer switch.

And there was Kyla, pale and forlorn, in a Thorian's tentacled grasp.

The end of a quest, indeed. The bitter end.

Sickness came to Haral.

Yet because he was the man he was, such a mood could not last long even here, even now. Thoughtfully, he gazed about--taking in the vaulted roof; the walls, honeycombed with coleopteran burrows; the expressions with which Sark's mongrel crewmen tried to mask their awe.

Above all, he looked upon the woman.

Sark's eyes, too, were gleaming. Drawn as by some mighty lodestone, he sent his riding-chair scudding forward to the dais on which the globe encasing the sleeping goddess rested. His web-fingered hand reached out to touch the crystal.

Then, abruptly, he halted. Slowly, he withdrew his hand and wheeled the chair about. His eyes sought Haral, and his lips parted in a leer.

He said: "Ulna has little love for strangers, _chitza_."

Haral said nothing.

"Perhaps they thought to trap a few with this pretty bauble," the raider chief remarked. His smile was sinister. "Perhaps Namboina told the things he told too easily, in order that he might laugh in hell because I, too, had died."

Haral shrugged. "You talk in circles, _starbo_."

"You came here seeking to waken Xaymar, did you not?" Sark smirked. "I merely meant that you should have the chance to do it."

His smile vanished. His words crackled: "Go to the dais, _chitza_! Awaken Xaymar!"

Haral's captors shoved him forward. Numbly, he clumped across the floor.

* * * * *

Sark and his men drew back to the protection of the archway. Kyla stood in the shadows, pressed against a wall.

For the fraction of a second, the blue man thought of calling out to her to draw the ray-gun she'd hidden in her garments, and blast the raiders with it.

But the fascination that lay in the sleeping goddess pulled even stronger.

He ran his tongue along dry lips. It could be as Sark had guessed--that this was a trap for the unwary; that the first time he touched the bubble would also be the last.

Yet still he stepped onto the dais. Then, breathing deep, he wiped a window through the dust that shrouded the shining globe.

Nothing happened.

A mass of valves and tubes and coils of unfamiliar pattern were mounted high inside the bubble. To one side, a cord like a bell-pull hung nearly to the floor.

But Haral gave the equipment scant heed. He had eyes only for the woman known as Xaymar.

Her body gleamed smooth and sleek in this eerie light--voluptuous, lithe-limbed, perfect. Motionless, naked save for the short, jeweled veil that masked the top half of her face against a nimbus of jet-black hair, she lay like some lovely manikin, frozen in a sleep as deep as death itself. Yet, somehow, there was a warmth and texture to her skin that seemed to reach out even through the crystal; a melding of curves and hollows that cried out that once she, too, had been alive.

_And might still live!_

The blue man sucked in air. Pivoting, he studied the panel set in the great globe's base.

The switch was there, just as Kyla had described it.

And the secret prayer, the call to waken--?

Only the soul of dead Namboina could chant it now.

Haral clutched the lever. Then, stiff with tension, he jammed it shut.

Seconds crept by on leaden feet. He felt a lone drop of icy sweat slide down his spine.

Then, inside the bubble, greenish mist began to rise. It filled the crystal casing. Eddying, swirling, it thickened till the woman's recumbent form grew dim and blurred.

In the vibrant stillness, Haral could hear his own heart beat.

Slowly, the mist within the great globe thinned again. A tube set high above the woman flashed on. Waves of pale violet light washed over her smooth, nude, perfect body.

In spite of himself, Haral's tension soared.

Now--abruptly, without warning--a wild, shrill, keening sound rose thinly. A new light blazed above the woman. Like lightning striking, a shining, silvery beam lanced down out of a queerly-shaped projector.

* * * * *

A sheet of crackling silver flame encased the woman. Her body went suddenly rigid. She jerked spasmodically, lifting half clear of her cot in a writhing, twisting arch.

Then, sharply, light and sound cut off again.

The woman fell back limply and lay still.

It dawned on Haral that his nails were rasping against the crystal.

Through an interminable moment, the woman within sagged inert as any corpse. Then, almost imperceptibly, her lips quivered. The bare breasts stirred as she drew a shallow, sobbing breath.

In the same instant, it seemed to Haral that he could see her lids open beneath the veil. But he could not be sure.

She tried to lift herself; fell back.

Fiercely, Haral slashed at the crystal with his elbow.

The heavy copronium elbow-piece of his armor tore through the globe--puncturing, not shattering. Haral stabbed at the bubble again, and it ripped, in the manner of some flexible, transparent plastic. Forcing a hand into the gash, the blue man tore a great chunk loose, clear to the floor: then another.

Stepping inside, he bent over the woman--gripping her shoulders; straining for her whisper.

"Quick! The flagon--!" Her hand stretched out in a feeble gesture.

Haral followed the movement to a holder beside the cot. It held a flask. Snatching up the container, he tore away the seal, then lifted and held the woman while she drank in great, greedy gulps.

When at last the flask was empty, she sank back once more. But now color was flowing to her face. Her breathing steadily grew deeper and more regular.

Haral let his weight rest on the edge of the cot. Very gently, he reached to lift the goddess' veil.

Spasmodically, her hands came up. "No--!" Nails dug into his wrist.

He started at the tempestuous violence of her; the sudden strength. Then, wearily, he drew back his hand.

In the same instant Sark's voice lanced in: "Leave her alone, _chitza_!"

Haral turned.

* * * * *

The raider chief and his men were back, now. They poured into the crypt in a rush. Sark himself swept toward the dais in his riding-chair as on the crest of a wave, ahead of all the others. His thick lips were working, his eyes hot with excitement.

But his fingers never left the cymosynthesizer switch.

Haral clenched his fist in frustrated fury. Of a sudden his wounds, his weariness, hung heavy on him.

He glimpsed Kyla. Hesitantly, she, too, was coming towards the goddess. Her lips were parted as if to cry out in protest against this whole bizarre affair. Deep lines of strain marred the pale loveliness of her face.

Sark cried: "Back, _chitza_! Stand clear of Xaymar!"

For an instant Haral stiffened. Then, painfully, he forced himself to his feet.

But now a new voice interrupted, imperious and vibrant:

"Who are you to give commands, fat beast, here in the innermost sanctuary of Xaymar, queen of storms?"

Haral pivoted.

The woman on the cot now sat erect, her very stance a mirror of haughtiness and pride.

Anger flamed in Sark's puffy cheeks. "Who dares to question? I am Sark--"

"Yes. He is Sark," Haral cut in. He poured savage irony into his words. "They say you are a goddess, Xaymar. But he--he is Sark, _gar_ of the space-raiders, a being so fierce and brave he does not even dare to waken you himself!"

"Silence, _chitza_!" shrieked the raider chief.

Haral mocked him: "He seeks your secrets, Xaymar--if he can pay the price with someone else's life, and not his own! As for commands--what does he care that others call you goddess? He is the great _Gar_ Sark--"

Sark cried: "Kill the _starbo_--!"

Now, for the first time, the woman men knew as Xaymar gave the gross raider heed. Twisting, she faced him. Her hand touched the cord that hung down beside the cot on which she rested, and even that simple gesture was somehow pregnant with a nameless menace that halted Sark and his crewmen in their tracks.

In a voice suddenly cold as Pluto's ice-things, she said, "If he dies, creature, you die with him!"

* * * * *

For an instant there was a silence that echoed vibrant tension. Then, calmly, Xaymar turned again to Haral. "And you, blue one--?" she queried. "What of you? Why do you seek me?"

Haral let her words hang for a moment. He looked out across the crypt ... past Sark, the crewmen, Kyla....

Kyla. She, too, rode with destiny; but it was a different destiny than his, a destiny that tolled her doom already. The lines that etched her face seemed even deeper now, set off by the contrast with the shimmering spun gold of her hair. There was more than beauty in her. There was spirit, also, born of stark courage, and all at once the very sight of her brought a poignancy that stabbed him like a knife.

But he pushed it back, and let his laugh ring out. "I seek the only thing in the void worth seeking!" he slashed recklessly. "I seek power, Xaymar--the power to fulfill my destiny and carve an empire. But I never thought to find the key to it locked in the brain of a woman as beautiful as you, or I'd have sought it sooner!"

Xaymar's ripe lips parted. "Your tongue is skilled, blue man! It alone should carry you to your empire!"

"But does that skilled tongue have truth, too, my goddess? Or is it so practiced that now it lies by instinct?" It was Kyla who lashed out, from a place close by the dais. Passion had brought hot color to her cheeks.

"They lie, my goddess! All these aliens lie!" she rushed on fiercely. "Hate and greed are the only creed they know. Already Ulna lies drenched in the blood they've shed--the blood of your followers, ground down by these monsters to slaves or less. Now, still thirsting for more wealth, more power, they seek you, too, my goddess! They would make you their slave--tear your secrets from you, that they may use the power that lies within the lightning to reach out across the void for yet more worlds to conquer--"

The woman who was the living goddess Xaymar, queen of storms, stared coolly down at her slim young priestess, Kyla.

"You are of the _Shamon_, are you not?" she interrupted, and open condescension was in her tone.

"Yes, my goddess--"

"A race of stuffy fools, the _Shamon_."

"My goddess--!"

"You prove my point. Who but a race of stuffy fools would try to pass off a sleeping woman as a goddess? That is, unless they were knaves, instead, seeking some gain by their deception."

"But these aliens would destroy us--"

"And why not, if the best you can do is pray to me for succor? The blue one spoke true. Power is the only thing in all the void worth seeking--for without it, man and race alike are doomed!"

* * * * *

Kyla stood very still. But, watching her, Haral could see her lips begin to tremble. The color was draining from her face again. Her features had taken on a stiff, unnatural set.

"Then ... Xaymar, queen of storms, deserts her faithful ones for aliens? She casts off my _Shamon_ people ... me, her priestess--?"

Xaymar tossed her head. "I tire of this dreary prattle!" she cried, and gestured to a massive, tentacled Thorian at Sark's side. "You! Take this _Shamon_ drab away!"

For the fraction of a second the Thorian's great saucer eyes rolled from Xaymar to Sark to Kyla. Then, wordless, he undulated towards the shrinking girl.

And Haral, too, stared, still not quite believing that this incredible creature, be she woman or devil or goddess, could so take command even of Sark's own men.

Then, again, he glimpsed the stiffness in Kyla's face, and a strange uneasiness gripped him. Perhaps it was the way she stood, almost as if waiting for the Thorian, with no thought of retreating.

The Thorian whipped a tentacle towards her.

But in the same instant Kyla, too, was moving. Her hair shimmered like quicksilver as she slid beneath the Thorian's snake-like member. Her hand darted beneath her filmy outer garment, then out again, jerking forth her ray-gun. Her body twisted as she stabbed the weapon close to the Thorian's monstrous bulk.

Then she was blasting, at so short a range that the raider's flesh burst asunder under the impact of the beam.

The Thorian's tentacles lashed out in frenzy. But already the girl was leaping back beyond his grasp.

Now, she was turning; springing up onto the dais. Her voice rang with a fury born of outrage:

"Die, traitor! Die for the _Shamon_ and for Ulna!"

She blazed a ray straight for Xaymar's naked body.

Haral threw himself forward, between the two women. Desperately, he tried to knock Kyla's ray-gun up with one hand while he swept Xaymar from her cot with the other.

But his wound-stiffened shoulder caught. The ray-gun's energy bolt burst on his own chest-plate. Its impact smashed him down. For a split second he saw the crypt as a blazing kaleidoscope of action, a maelstrom swirling in on a pain-wracked vortex that was his brain. He caught the madness in Kyla's eyes; the sudden panic in the way that Xaymar fell. Beyond them, the space-raiders' faces merged in a weird blurred jumble.

Then Sark was roaring, "Now! Now! Seize them--!"

Frantically, Haral tried to tear clear of pain and shock and debris.

But before he could move, Xaymar caught the cord that hung beside her. Spasmodically, she jerked it down.

He knew, somehow, that it was an alarm, even though the sound of its signal was pitched too high and thin for human ears.

The sight that followed was one of the strangest he had ever seen.

* * * * *

For out of the thousands of coleopteran burrows that pock-marked the walls of this hidden crypt, a horde came leaping--a horde of great scarlet beetles that hurtled down upon Sark and his raiders before they could so much as turn. A living wave, they burst over the crewmen and the dais--clutching the aliens, bearing them down; yet holding them, not killing.

Haral found himself flat on his back, pinned there by two monstrous coleoptera. Kyla, too, lay prone, shaking under the touch of another of the beetles.

Haral twisted, looking for Xaymar.

Alone out of all the throng, she stood erect, untouched. A horde of the coleoptera had grouped themselves about her. Now they bent low in weird attitudes of genuflection.

The woman waved them back with a quick, impatient gesture. Swiftly, she picked her way to Haral.

The beetles that held him gave way before her. Gripping the blue man's hand, she helped him to his feet.

"You see, warrior--?" She lifted her hand in a sweeping, all-inclusive gesture. "I know what power means--a power greater than any the void has ever seen. I, too, have carved an empire: the empire of these silent ones, the coleoptera. To them, I am truly goddess. They are mine to command."

Haral swayed a little. Tiny waves of nausea washed over him, rising like vapors out of the pain flowing from his wound. With a sort of dull detachment, he observed that blood had begun to drip from his left hand's fingers once again.

A trifle thickly, he said, "I hear your words. But what good is your beetle empire? Where can it lead you? How far can you go?"

The woman called Xaymar smiled a smile that was old when this outlaw world was young. "Did you not say I held the key to your fate, blue one? The coleoptera are my workers and my warriors. Because I saw the role that they might play, I helped them gain the power of thought; so now they help me turn my dreams to destiny."

"Dreams?" Haral muttered. "Dreams indeed! They say you've lain here sleeping a thousand years."

Xaymar laughed softly, tauntingly. "And why do you suppose I slept so long, blue warrior? Believe me, it was not out of boredom. No; I, too, like you, reached out for power. But first I had to fill my legion's ranks. I needed time for my coleoptera to breed and multiply, in preparation for my day of conquest...."

She paused, and the jewels with which her veil was set seemed to gleam so bright that Haral closed his eyes against them. Once again the air of nameless menace he'd felt before crept through the crypt.

Xaymar's voice came as from afar: "We shall ride together, warrior, you and I! You've saved my life, and you have a will that matches mine. I've longed this thousand years and more for a man like you to share my dreams...."

The words went on and on, but Haral could no longer hear. The sickness in him grew. He knew of a sudden that he was going to fall.

Words and more words--an incoherent jumble. He was toppling now, yet there was nothing he could do to stop it. In great, languorous spirals, the floor of the dais was roaring up into his eyes.

But as it approached, somehow, it grew dimmer ... dimmer ... dimmer....

Then new words came. Or, rather, old words, thundering out of the black sack of his memory.

Kyla's words:

"_Each night she took a different lover--and then, at the dawn, at her command, each one was slain!_"

The blackness closed in....