Chapter VIII

They dragged Haral out of his cell just after noon.

Wearily, he raised his eyes from his shackled wrists and, squinting at the sudden glare, looked up into the yellow Ulnese sky.

He wondered, bleakly, if he'd ever get another chance to taste its freedom.

Then a _Pervod_ took one arm, a _dau_ the other. Roughly, they hurried him into the central park with shoves and buffets.

A shout went up from the lusting crowd--a shout for blood, a shout for slaughter. A Martian leaped forward to trip him. A Thorian slapped a tentacle savagely across his face, and he knew from the blinding pain that flesh had torn away under its suction.

Then he was stumbling through the blood-soaked sand of the arena to the bank of seats where the raider chieftains waited.

And there was Sark, just as before, sprawled out like some great, slimy slug in his ornate Uranian riding-chair.

The raider's fat-rimmed eyes gleamed bright with murderous triumph now. He bared his teeth in a sinister smirk, and his whole gross body shook with a cruel laughter.

But his hand never left the cymosynthesizer switch.

There, too, sat Xaymar: living goddess, queen of storms, the prize that had drawn Sark here to Ulna.

Even now, standing there before her, Haral felt the spell of her vibrant, voluptuous loveliness. With wrenching force, it came to him what a fool he'd been to go against her; to toss away her favor and all it stood for in order to take his own mad road.

Her ripe lips curved into a smile.

He wondered if she were laughing at him behind the jeweled veil that masked her.

But if she were, what did it matter? What difference could it make to him, in this last hour of his bitter odyssey?

Then, half-unconsciously, he straightened. His thoughts, at least, were still his own. No one need know that regret, despair, welled high within him. He could die as he'd lived, by the warrior's creed, head high and neck unbending.

It was as if the very gesture rekindled some near-dead spark within him. A little of his feeling of hopelessness and black dejection seemed to fall away. Coolly, almost, he gazed about him.

It dawned on him, now, that the mob gathered here to watch his downfall was not quite the same as the one he'd faced that other day when he'd first blazed his path across Sark's devilish drive for conquest.

For now coleoptera were massed along one side of the arena. A rustling, eddying sea of vivid scarlet, they crowded close by the chieftains' stand, as if drawn to the incredible woman who was their ruler by a magnet.

Then a new, wild shout roared up from the crowd.

Haral shot a quick glance back across his shoulder.

The yelling mob was parting. Two more crewmen drove through the throng, dragging along another prisoner.

A lovely prisoner.

Kyla.

Or did her beauty now lie only in his own eyes?

* * * * *

Blood ran down her face. Her features were drawn to a mask of anguish. When she stumbled, one of the raiders caught her by the hair and jerked her upright.

In the stand, Sark rocked with laughter.

Then she was standing, swaying, in the crewmen's grip, beside Haral.

Sark's laughter died. He leaned forward, thick lips working. His fat face was a study in sadistic fury.

A hush fell over the crowd.

He cried: "So, _chitzas_! Now you die!"

The silence rolled like thunder.

Haral stood wordless. He could barely see Kyla, out of the tail of his eye.

She did not move. She did not speak. Only the way her breasts rose and fell too fast whispered of the conflict that churned within her.

Or was it exertion, sheer weariness, that made her breathe so hard?

Now, savagely, Sark turned on the blue man.

"You, warrior!" He spat, and his face contorted. "Warrior? I'll teach you to call yourself a warrior, _starbo_! You talked bold, you _zanat_, when you rode in here with your _hwalon_ and your armor and your light-lance. But there's _kabat_ in your veins instead of blood. Now you'll learn to crawl, and beg for death!"

Haral stood very still. A haze seemed to hang over the leering crowd, the blood and dirt, the yellow sky.

How had Sark said it, that other time? "_Why have you come so long a way to die?_"

Here it had begun. Here it was ending.

This was his destiny.

And here was Kyla. Here was Xaymar....

Xaymar, most beautiful of women, with a body to tempt a man to hell. Paradise, and infinite evil. His chance for power and glory.

Xaymar, in a clinging scarlet gown.

The smile still lingered on her lips.

How had Sark lured her here, after all his treachery?

But then, hatred made strange partners.

And they were waiting for him to crawl.

Recklessly, then, he laughed aloud. With a twist and a jerk, he tore free from the grasp of the raider crewmen and strode forward.

He could see Sark's web-fingered hand knot convulsively on the cymosynthesizer switch.

He laughed again, and made his voice ring: "Bring on your torture, _stabats_! I'll show you how a warrior dies!"

* * * * *

A spasm of rage shook Sark's gross body. His face grew purple as Ulna's peaks. "You _chitza_--!" His voice rose crazily, shrilly. "Throw him in the ring! Let the beetles tear his flesh from his bones! Stake him out and let them feast upon him before he dies!"

A clacking of mandibles rose, a hideous, castaneting rattle. A thousand protuberant, multi-faceted insectile eyes drew into focus.

In spite of himself, Haral felt the hair on his nape go stiff.

The crewmen moved in to seize him.

"Die with this thought, you fool!" Sark shouted. "Xaymar has pledged herself to share her secret with me! I'll have the lightning for my weapon! Die thinking of me with the universe in my power, Haral! Die! Die--"

And then, for the first time, Xaymar spoke: "No, Sark." Her tone was flat, decisive, final.

The raider chief went rigid in his riding-chair. His bulbous head swiveled. "What--?"

She smiled, a lazy, mocking smile. Her hand came up in an easy gesture. "I said no, he does not die. Not till he's heard a thing I have to say. That is the only reason that I've come here." Her voice dropped a note. "Perhaps ... he need not die at all."

"No!" Sark shouted, and even through the fat, muscles stood out along his neck and jaws. "He dies, I tell you! Here, now, in this arena--"

The woman's lithe body seemed to draw together like that of a tigress crouching. "I say he lives!" she slashed back fiercely. And then, with swift, deadly emphasis: "Or ... would _you_ rather die?"

Grey came to Sark's puffed, blubbery face, washing out the purple. Flecks of foam formed at the corners of his mouth, and his eyes were suddenly diamond-bright with hate and fear. Snarling, incoherent sounds bubbled in his throat.

"You may make the choice," said Xaymar smoothly. "Which shall it be _Gar_ Sark?"

The harsh sounds ceased. The raider chief sank back into his chair.

Still smiling, the woman men called Xaymar turned once more to Haral; and of a sudden the strange, dark, nameless evil of her reached out to him in throbbing, vibrant waves.

"Would you live, blue warrior?" she asked softly.

* * * * *

Narrow-eyed, wary, he tried to read her face through the masking veil. His nerves all at once were like groping tendrils, so sharply tuned his whole body ached with tension.

He said: "Let me hear the price before I answer."

"It is not high...."

"Let me hear it!"

The ripe lips parted. Her sleek, voluptuous body seemed to reach out to his till, eerily, it was almost as if he could feel it pressed against him.

She said: "Never before you have I met a man with fire to match my own, blue warrior! Always, my lovers fawned and flattered, whimpering phrases that were half fear, half weakness."

"The price!"

"But you--you waded through your own blood to find me! You would have taken me by force! You dared to strike me down!"

She came to her feet in one lithe movement. Her voice took on new vibrance.

"You still may have me, warrior--both me, and my secrets! I'll give them gladly, if I can only share your destiny, travel with you...."

She paused, and the feeling of dark sin and horror that radiated from her wound round Haral--enveloping, all-pervasive. He swayed, caught up in the surging power of it as by bonds of steel.

Her words came, dim and distant:

"Grant me only one favor, blue man ... only one, and all shall be yours!"

Haral did not speak.

"Give me the woman, warrior! Give me the _Shamon_ priestess to do with as I will, to prove that you are truly mine!"

The horror was no longer nameless. The evil took form in words of fire.

Haral choked. "No! Not Kyla--!"

"Sit here beside me as my lover, while my children feast upon her body--" Xaymar's gesture took in the whole blank-eyed, slithering, lusting beetle horde. "Bind yourself to me with this one sacrifice of passion--"

"No!" screamed Haral. "No, no--!"

The words came from his throat, but it was not his voice. The world rocked. His body shook, and he could not stop it.

Xaymar's hands, her voice, reached out to him, cajoling: "What can her one life mean to you, who have carved your destiny in blood? What can she matter, this _Shamon_ scum?"

"No--!"

"Look deep within you, warrior! Look to your dreams of empire, your ambition! Look to me--"

* * * * *

As she spoke, with one tempestuous sweep, she flung wide her scarlet gown and stood before him naked, as she had lain beneath the crystal bubble in her deep-sunk vault. Her hand moved sensually over the sleek curves of her perfect body. Her midnight hair rippled in the breeze.

"Look at me, blue man! Look--and then tell me you can reject me for another!" Her voice swelled with a richer timbre. "I am yours, warrior--and I know you want me, for I have looked into your brain! It was I who reached out across the miles and found you, through your _Shamon_ girl's unguarded mind, so that Sark could seize you and bring you here. I've been inside you all the time you've stood in this arena--thinking your thoughts, feeling the things you felt. I know you better than you know yourself. I know how many times you've cursed yourself for giving me up to save this other creature. Now, at this very moment, you waver. Why should you die with her, when you can live and see your dreams of power come true and have me, Xaymar, queen of storms, most beautiful of women?"

Haral could not make the world stop rocking. His body was a numb, unfeeling thing. His brain ... his brain--He clutched his head between his shackled hands and tried to fight, to think, to slash the haze away.

Xaymar cried: "Come to me, warrior!"

Numbly, dumbly, he stared at her, swaying.

She raised her hands. "Come...!" And as she spoke, it was as if her fingers had reached into his mind--twisting it; pulling....

He stumbled towards her, a single step.

"Come!"

This time the word was in his brain itself, not in his ears. He took another step. Another.

"Come... come... come...."

It was like that other night--was it a million years ago?--the night he'd heard the coleoptera calling.

But the thing the beetles called was "Kill! Kill! Kill!"

Kill the man-things.

He staggered forward.

And there was Xaymar, ripe lips smiling. He felt her arms go tight about him, the pressure of her naked body on him.

He tried to think of Kyla.

But what was Kyla? Why should he die for a girl called Kyla when he could live and have his dreams and Xaymar?

_Kill the man-things._

Blonde hair, and a slim young body. Courage, and a head held proudly.

Xaymar. Power, and ripe lips, hot with passion.

_Kill the man-things._

"Kiss me, warrior." A jeweled veil-mask.

What did it hide?

_Kill the man-things!_

But Kyla.... No--! Not even for power could he give up Kyla! Not send her to her death, to the coleoptera--!

* * * * *

Something snapped inside Haral. The world went mad. His brain was on fire, on fire, twisting and turning, turning and burning, pulled through his skull by sensuous fingers.

He couldn't think. His body was a bursting entity of anguish.

_Kill the man-things!_

Jewels glinting in a filmy mask.

Spasmodically, he jerked away. Convulsive, clutching, without volition, his hands clawed up into Xaymar's face and snatched away the veil.

The fire in his brain went out. The torment ended. Staggering, he saw the world without the haze.

Now Xaymar's hands were before her face; her fingers masking, shielding.

Savagely, he caught her wrists and jerked them down ... stared into her eyes.

He almost screamed aloud.

Because her eyes were not humanoid eyes.

Faceted, fixed, protuberant, glassy, they were _insectile_!

The eyes of a beetle, a coleopteron!

A phrase she'd used came back: "... _while my children feast_...."

Through the horror and shock that froze him, he heard Sark shouting: "Seize him! Seize him--!"

Hands clutched his arms. They jerked him back and pinned him down.

Xaymar said; "So at last you know ..." and now her voice crawled with hate and fury.

Haral did not answer.

She raved at him: "Yes! I am of the coleoptera--a mutant, and a hybrid! Now you know how I gave them the power of thought! Those that think are my own children, my descendants! And now you know, too, why I took a thousand human lovers, and slew each one before the dawn. For I have human passion hot within me, but no man could forbear to look beneath my veil, and with my brain close-tuned to theirs, I felt the horror well up in them--the same disgust and loathing that even you cannot conceal. So I killed them, that they might never tell my secret--"

She broke off. Her hands clenched till blood spurted where the nails gouged through the palms. Her voice rose--hysterical, vindictive. "Throw him alive into the arena! Yes, let my children feast upon him--!"

* * * * *

The crewmen jerked Haral to his feet again. The coleoptera surged forward. He glimpsed slim Kyla, with horror written on her lovely face.... Sark, doubled over, gloating and laughing ... the seething fury that dwelt in Xaymar.

But now his brain was clear again, the shadow of the nameless evil gone. Fire surged in his veins, and wild, reckless daring.

The _dau_ and the _Pervod_ dragged him towards the beetles.

He cried, "I'll meet my fate standing, you _chitzas_!" and kicked with all his might for the _Pervod's_ fragile reptilian ankle.

He heard the bones snap over all the tumult. The _Pervod's_ shriek rang like the scream of a sky-shell.

He snatched for its ray-gun.

The _dau's_ great arms caught him as the weapon tore loose from the holster. He felt his ribs cracking as it lifted him--crushed him.

Desperately, he triggered the beam square into its belly.

The hairy arms dropped him. The _dau_ sprawled back, dying.

Haral spun round, still firing.

The beam caught the first of the onrushing beetles. It seared through a second. A third reeled and stumbled.

Haral lunged for the chiefs' stand.

Sark stood there, stiff-frozen. Xaymar lurched back in terror.

Haral cried: "Die, curse you!"

He whipped up the ray-gun. But Sark shrieked, "Wait, blue man--! You and all Ulna die here with me!"

His gross body twisted, and Haral saw the fat fingers still locked on the cymosynthesizer switch.

In the same instant the raider chief's other hand darted beneath his tent-like tunic, incredibly fast, snatching out a Venusian _xlan_-tube.

Blue fire belched at Haral.

He threw himself flat. But it was the end. It could be no other way.

This was where destiny and the road to empire at last had led him.

To failure. To death. To his blood in the dirt of Sark's arena.

Why had he picked such a road to travel? What good did it do to die, when even death was empty, without meaning?

Unless, perhaps, he could save Ulna....

He triggered the ray-gun as the fire seared down his back.

But not at Sark. His target was the cymosynthesizer switch; the cable.

Through a haze of pain, he saw them fuse; saw Sark's hand, too, turn to sifting ashes.

The raider screamed and surged forward.

Haral triggered a final beam.

It tore Sark's bulbous head from his shoulders.

The roar of the mob, lunging in for the kill, came dimly to the blue man's ears.

He was glad. They'd at least put an end to his agony.

But the roar seemed to die again, and he wondered if perhaps some dark corner of his brain still functioned in its way after consciousness had left him.

Then hands touched his face; soft hands, caressing.

* * * * *

With a tremendous, wrenching effort, he opened his eyes, and there was Kyla, with tears on her cheeks and soft lips atremble.

But where was the crowd, the beetles, the cutthroat crewmen?

Another face came ... the face of Xaymar.

As from afar, her words came fiercely: "I hate you, warrior, for you spurn me for a stupid _Shamon_ child! But I am of Ulna, and again you have saved my life and planet. So, now, my coleopteran legions shall protect you till my science can give back your daring and make your body whole once more. My projectors, too, my secrets of the wind and rain, the lightning--I leave them in your hands to help you guard this world of mine, till my own day to strike shall come. But for myself, I must go back to frozen sleep again, for another thousand years, lest I should rise and slay you in my fury!"

Her face, her voice, faded into distance; and he wondered if it were only in his mind that he seemed to hear a final, gentler whisper: "... And I shall dream of you a thousand years, my warrior...."

Then Kyla's tears were on his cheeks, too; her soft lips pressed against his. And there was peace in him at last, and he was at one with his dreams, his destiny.

* * * * *

_Naked, still as death, the veiled woman-goddess men called Xaymar rested on a gold-draped dais within a great, glowing, crystal ball._

_Xaymar, passionate goddess, queen of storms. Ruler of rain and wind and lightning, empress of all the surging forces that spread their tumult across the sky. Sainted monster, evil savior. Old as time, and young as folly. Born of woman, damned of men, wise with dark wisdom gone astray...._