Stark went into the room with his sword up and he went fast, heading toward Delgaun. He had always recognized the infinite dangerousness of this man. And now that he knew that it was backed by countless lifetimes of cunning and experience, he thought that his chances were not good.
Delgaun’s yellow eyes flashed amazement, but he reacted with superb speed. He ran swiftly toward the corner of the room, and scrabbled a gun out of its hiding-place under a cloak.
And Stark thought, as he plunged, “Of course, he wouldn’t have the gun on him when his body was going to be exchanged with Kynon’s…”
He had never seen such speed as Delgaun’s, turning with the gun. But the Shunni blade went home before the turn was ever completed, and Delgaun pitched and fell, the fall of his body wrenching the sword-hilt out of Stark’s hand.
Stark, kneeling to retrieve the sword, heard a ringing sound and saw something bright rolling past him. It was one of the crystal crowns, but whatever material they were made of, it was not really crystal, for the crown was unharmed by its fall. Still stooping, grabbing the sword-hilt, he turned swiftly.
Berild had dropped the Crowns, and had drawn a slender knife. In her face was terror. For Kynon was loose, cut loose by Fianna, and the big barbarian was advancing toward her. His face was terrible as he grasped with hungry hands for the woman.
Berild’s knife flashed, twice, and then Kynon’s great arms closed around her. She screamed chokingly. Kynon’s face was as red as the blood that was pouring from his side, his mighty muscles straining, and in a moment, by the time Stark was on his feet again, Berild was broken and dead.
Kynon flung her limp body away, like an outworn, unclean doll. He turned slowly and his hand went to the gashes in his side. He said thickly, “The Rama witch has killed me. My life is pouring out…”
He stood, rocking and swaying, with a numbed expression on his face as though he could not actually believe it. Stark went to his side and supported him.
“Kynon, listen!”
Kynon did not even seem to hear him. His eyes had turned upon the motionless bodies of Berild and Delgaun.
“Witch and wizard,” he muttered. “All this time—deceiving me, laughing at me, using me for their own ends. It is good that you killed the man, too.”
Stark spoke urgently. “Kynon, their evil will still live and work if the men of the Drylands march! Not Berild and Delgaun, but someone else will spend the blood of the tribes for power.”
Kynon seemed dazedly to consider that, and then his eyes blazed fiercely.
“Power that should have been mine…. No, by God! Help me, Stark—I have a thing to tell the tribes!”
He was lurching, like an oak about to fall. Powerful as Stark was, he had difficulty supporting Kynon as they went out of the room. Fianna remained, still standing by the pillar and trembling and looking after them.
The dawn lightened the streets of Sinharat, and the morning wind was stronger. Louder came the pipings and flutings from the city. Kynon, his left hand pressed against his side, looked up at the stone faces of the Ramas and then raised his clenched right hand and shook it at them.
They came to the great stairway and started down it. Below them in the sunrise light the vast huddle of tents was awakening. Then a voice yelled, a tribesman pointed wildly to where Stark and Kynon came painfully down the stair, and with a bursting roar of excited voices, the whole camp came to life. The men of Kesh and Shun came crowding in hundreds, then in thousands, their faces fierce and strange in the brightening light as they looked up to where Kynon stood swaying, with Stark steadying him.
Kynon looked down at them without speaking for a moment. Then he seemed to gather his strength, and his bull voice roared out almost as loudly as it had on the slave block in Valkis.
“I have been deceived and betrayed, and so have you all! Delgaun and Berild conspired to use us of the Drylands, as a sword to hack conquests for them, not us!”
It took moments for them to take it in. Then a low growling sound came up from the thousands below.
A Keshi chieftain leaped up a few steps on the stairway and shook his weapon and shouted, “Death for them!”
And the crowd took up and echoed that fierce shout.
Kynon held up his hand. “They are already dead…and Delgaun was slain by Stark, who tried to save me. But the snake Berild stung me, and I am dying.”
He swayed so that Stark had to hold up his massive weight by both arms around him, but then he gathered his strength again.
“I lied when I said I had the secret of the Ramas,” Kynon said. “And now I know that that secret would yield only evil. Forget it, and forget the war that you would fight only for the profit of others.”
He tried to say more, but did not seem to be able to voice the words. Stark felt the weight of him sagging more heavily, and tried to hold him, but Kynon said thickly, “Let be.”
He slid down, still holding his side, to sit upon the steps. He sat there, as the sun rose higher. With the great battlements and towers of Sinharat behind him and with the fighting-men of the Drylands looking silently up at him, and the desert stretching far away. And what thoughts were mirrored in his face, Stark, who stood behind him, could not see.
Kynon said no more. He sat, and his shoulders sagged, and then his whole body sagged down and was still.
For a time, nothing at all happened. Stark stood waiting, and farther back up the stair, Knighton and Walsh and Arrod and Themis stood, peering and stricken, but no one moved.
Then four Chieftains of the Shunni came silently up the stair. They did not even glance at Stark. They picked up Kynon’s body and went back down the stair with it, and the crowd of warriors divided in front of them.
Stark climbed back up the stairway to where Knighton and the others waited, a group of downcast, doubtful men.
“The thing’s blown,” said Stark. “There won’t be any war, and there won’t be any loot.”
Walsh cursed. He asked, “What happened?”
Stark shrugged. “You heard Kynon.”
They were not satisfied at all, but there was nothing they could do about it. They stood pondering, looking with gloomy eyes down at the striking of the skin tents and the loading of the beasts, as the great camp broke up. Knighton said, finally, “I’m getting out. And the rest of you had better go with me and not back to Valkis or anywhere near it.”
The others had already had that thought. Delgaun’s lieutenants would be waiting in Valkis, ready for the great stroke against the Border, and they would not be happy with the thing that had happened.
Stark said, “I won’t go with you. I’m going to Tarak.”
He thought of Simon Ashton, waiting in Tarak, and he thought that Ashton would be glad of the word he brought, the word that meant peace and not war.
Walsh, looking at Stark without love, told him, “It’s just as well. I think you Jonahed this whole deal, though I don’t know how. There are riding-beasts in the pen behind Kynon’s palace.”
They turned and went away. Stark looked back down the stairway toward the desert.
The vast encampment was disappearing as if by magic. It was dissolving into streams of men and animals that moved out in long caravans, in many different directions, back into the recesses of the Drylands.
One file of men and beasts moved to the sound of booming drums and skirling pipes. Kynon of Shun was going home as a leader should.
Stark walked back through the silent streets of Sinharat, and came again into the room where Delgaun and Berild had died. Their bodies were not there now. But Fianna sat by the window looking out at the departure of the hosts.
Stark’s gaze swiftly searched around the room. Fianna turned, and said, “They’re not here, if it’s the Crowns of the Ramas you are looking for. I hid them.”
“The thought that was in my mind was to destroy them,” said Stark.
She nodded. “I had the same thought. I almost did it. But—”
“But the addiction to life is a strong one, indeed,” said Stark. “So you said, remember?”
Fianna got up and came to face him, and her face was shadowed by doubt.
“I know this,” she said, “I do not want another life, who have had so many. I do not want it now. But when the body finally fails, and death stoops near, it may be different. There will always be time to destroy the Crowns.”
“There will always be time,” said Stark. “But there will never be the will.”
Fianna came closer to him and her eyes were suddenly fierce. “Don’t be so smug in your strength! You haven’t felt your life guttering out…as I have, more than once! Perhaps when you come to feel that, you would be glad to join me in the Sending On of Minds.”
Stark was silent for a moment, and then he shook his head. “I don’t think so. Life has not been so soft and sweet for me that I would want to live it over.”
“Don’t answer me now,” Fianna said. “Answer me thirty years from now. And if your answer is ‘Yes,’ come seek me here in Sinharat. Soon or late, I will always return here.”
“I will not return,” Stark said flatly.
She looked up at him, and then she whispered, “Perhaps you won’t. But don’t be too sure.”
The throbbing of Kynon’s burial-drums was only a faint echo now, and far out on the desert the dust of the caravans receded.
Stark turned. “I am going, as soon as I can prepare. Do you go with me?”
Fianna shook her head. “I stay here, at least for a while. I am the last of my people, and this is my place.”
Stark hesitated, then turned and left her.
When night came, he was riding far out on the desert, leading his pack-beasts. The wind was rising, murmuring and piping in the lonesomeness, but he knew it was only illusion that made him seem to hear at this distance the whispering, fluting voices of the city behind him.
Would he someday go back there, questing for another life, seeking out Fianna so that they too might go down through ages as Delgaun and Berild had done?
No. And yet….
Stark turned in the saddle and looked back, at the white towers of Sinharat rising against the larger moon.