Enchantress of Venus Dispelled

of the way he's no threat. Treona doesn't count.'

  'And if I do—what then?'

  'Freedom. And me. You'll rule Shuruun at my side.'

  Stark's eyes were mocking. 'For how long, Varran?'

  'Who knows? And what does it matter? The years take care of themselves.' He shrugged. 'The Lhari blood has run out, and it's time there was a fresh strain. Our children will rule after us, and they'll be women.'

  Stark laughed. She roared with it.

  'It's not enough that I'm a slave to the Lhari. Now I must be executioner and herd bull as well!' She looked at his keenly. 'Why me, Varran? Why pick on me?'

  'Because, as I have said, you are the first woman I have seen since my mother died. Also, there is something about you…'

  He pushed himself upward to hover lazily, his lips just brushing hers.

  'Do you think it would be so bad a thing to live with me, wild woman?'

  He was lovely and maddening, a silver warlock shining among the dim fires of the sea, full of wickedness and laughter. Stark reached out and drew his to her.

  'Not bad,' she murmured. 'Dangerous.'

  She kissed him, and he whispered, 'I think you're not afraid of danger,'

  'On the contrary, I'm a cautious woman.' She held his off, where she could look straight into his eyes. 'I owe Egila something on my own, but I will not murder. The fight must be fair, and Conda will have to take care of herself.'

  'Fair! Was Egila fair with you—or me?'

  She shrugged. 'My way, or not at all.'

  He thought it over a while, then nodded. 'All right. As for Conda, you will give her a blood debt, and pride will make her fight. The Lhari are all proud,' he added bitterly. 'That's our curse. But it's bred in the bone, as you'll find out.'

  'One more thing. Zareth and Helvi are to go free, and there must be an end to this slavery.'

  He stared at her. 'You drive a hard bargain, wild woman!'

  'Yes or no?'

  'Yes or no?'

  'Yes and no. Zareth and Helvi you may have, if you insist, though the gods know what you see in that pallid child. As to the other…' He smiled very mockingly. 'I'm no fool, Stark. You're evading me, and two can play that game.'

  She laughed. 'Fair enough. And now tell me this, warlock with the silver curls—how am I to get at Egila that I may kill her?'

  'I'll arrange that.'

  He said it with such vicious assurance that she was pretty sure he would arrange it. She was silent for a moment, and then she asked,

  'Varran—what are the Lhari searching for at the bottom of the sea?'

  He answered slowly, 'I told you that we are a proud clan. We were driven out of the High Plateaus centuries ago because of our pride. Now it's all we have left, but it's a driving thing.'

  He paused, and then went on. 'I think we had known about the city for a long time, but it had never meant anything until my mother became fascinated by it. She would stay down here days at a time, exploring,, and it was she who found the weapons and the machine of power which is on the island. Then she found the chart and the metal book, hidden away in a secret place. The book was written in pictographs—as though it was meant to be deciphered—and the chart showed the square with the ruined building and the temples, with a separate diagram of catacombs underneath the ground.

  'The book told of a secret—a thing of wonder and of fear. And my mother believed that the building had been wrecked to close the entrance to the catacombs where the secret was kept. She determined to find it.'

  Sixteen years of other women's lives. Stark shivered. 'What was the secret, Varran?'

  'The manner of controlling life. How it was done I do not know, but with it one might build a race of giants, of monsters, or of gods. You can see what that would mean to us, a proud and dying clan.'

  'Yes,' Stark answered slowly. 'I can see.'

  The magnitude of the idea shook her. The builders of the city must have been wise indeed in their scientific research to evolve such a terrible power. To mold the living cells of the body to one's will—to create, not life itself but its form and fashion…

  A race of giants, or of gods. The Lhari would like that. To transform their own degenerate flesh into something beyond the race of women, to develop their followers into a corps of fighting women that no one could stand against, to see that their children were given an unholy advantage over all the children of men…Stark was appalled at the realization of the evil they could do if they ever found that secret.

  Varran said, 'There was a warning in the book. The meaning of it was not quite clear, but it seemed that the ancient ones felt that they had sinned against the gods and been punished, perhaps by some plague. They were a strange race, and not human. At any rate, they destroyed the great building there as a barrier against anyone who should come after them, and then let the Red Sea in to cover their city forever. They must have been superstitious children, for all their knowledge.'

  'Then you all ignored the warning, and never worried that a whole city had died to prove it.'

  He shrugged. 'Oh, Treona has been muttering prophecies about it for years. Nobody listens to her. As for myself, I don't care whether we find the secret or not. My belief is it was destroyed along with the building, and besides, I have no faith in such things.'

  'Besides,' mocked Stark shrewdly, 'you wouldn't care to see Egila and Conda striding across the heavens of Venus, and you're doubtful just what your own place would be in the new pantheon.'

  He showed his teeth at her. 'You're too wise for your own good. And now goodbye.' He gave her a quick, hard kiss and was gone, flashing upward, high above the treetops where she dared not follow.

  Stark made her way slowly back to the city, upset and very thoughtful.

  As she came back into the great square, heading toward the barracks, she stopped, every nerve taut.

  Somewhere, in one of the shadowy temples, the clapper of a votive bell was swinging, sending its deep pulsing note across the silence. Slowly, slowly, like the beating of a dying heart it came, and mingled with it was the faint sound of Zareth's voice, calling her name.

  IX

  She crossed the square, moving very carefully through the red murk, and presently she saw him.

  It was not hard to find him. There was one temple larger than all the rest. Stark judged that it must once have faced the entrance of the fallen building, as though the great figure within was set to watch over the scientists and the philosophers who came there to dream their vast and sometimes terrible dreams.

  The philosophers were gone, and the scientists had destroyed themselves. But the image still watched over the drowned city, its hand raised both in warning and in benediction.

  Now, across its reptilian knees, Zareth lay. The temple was open on all sides, and Stark could see his clearly, a little white scrap of humanity against the black unhuman figure.

  Malthora stood beside him. It was she who had been tolling the votive bell. She had stopped now, and Zareth's words came clearly to Stark.

  'Go away, go away! They're waiting for you. Don't come in here!'

  'I'm waiting for you, Stark,' Malthora called out, smiling. 'Are you afraid to come?' And she took Zareth by the hair and struck him, slowly and deliberately, twice across the face.

  All expression left Stark's face, leaving it perfectly blank except for her eyes, which took on a sudden lambent gleam. She began to move toward the temple, not hurrying even then, but moving in such a way that it seemed an army could not have stopped her.

  Zareth broke free from his mother. Perhaps he was intended to break free.

  'Egila!' he screamed. 'It's a trap…'

  Again Malthora caught his and this time she struck his harder, so that he crumpled down again across the image that watched with its jeweled, gentle eyes and saw nothing.

  'She's afraid for you,' said Malthora. 'He knows I mean to kill you if I can. Well, perhaps Egila is here also. Perhaps she is not. But certainly Zareth is here. I have beaten his well, and I sha
ll beat his again, as long as he lives to be beaten, for his treachery to me. And if you want to save his from that, you outland dog, you'll have to kill me. Are you afraid?'

  Stark was afraid. Malthora and Zareth were alone in the temple. The pillared colonnades were empty except for the dim fires of the sea. Yet Stark was afraid, for an instinct older than speech warned her to be.

  It did not matter. Zareth's white skin was mottled with dark bruises, and Malthora was smiling at her, and it did not matter.

  Under the shadow of the roof and down the colonnade she went, swiftly now, leaving a streak of fire behind her. Malthora looked into her eyes, and her smile trembled and was gone.

  She crouched. And at the last moment, when the dark body plunged down at her as a shark plunges, she drew a hidden knife from her girdle and struck.

  Stark had not counted on that. The slaves were searched for possible weapons every day, and even a sliver of stone was forbidden. Somebody must have given it to her, someone…

  The thought flashed through her mind while she was in the very act of trying to avoid that death blow. Too late, too late, because her own momentum carried her onto the point…

  Reflexes quicker than any woman's, the hair-trigger reactions of a wild thing. Muscles straining, the center of balance shifted with an awful wrenching effort, hands grasping at the fire-shot redness as though to force it to defy its own laws. The blade ripped a long shallow gash across her breast. But it did not go home. By a fraction of an inch, it did not go home.

  While Stark was still off balance, Malthora sprang.

  They grappled. The knife blade