VIII
Twice before in his life Stark had come near to freezing. It had beenlike this, the numbness and the cold. And yet it seemed that the darkforce had struck rather at his nerve centers than at his flesh.
He could not see Ciara, who was behind him, but he heard the metallicclashing of her mail and one small, whispered cry, and he knew that shehad fallen, too.
The glowing creatures surrounded him. He saw their bodies bending overhim, the frosty tendrils of their faces writhing as though in excitementor delight.
Their hands touched him. Little hands with seven fingers, deft andfrail. Even his numbed flesh felt the terrible cold of their touch,freezing as outer space. He yelled, or tried to, but they were notabashed.
They lifted him and bore him toward the tower, a company of them,bearing his heavy weight upon their gleaming shoulders.
He saw the tower loom high and higher still above him. The cloud of darkforce that crowned it blotted out the stars. It became too huge and highto see at all, and then there was a low flat arch of stone close abovehis face, and he was inside.
Straight overhead--a hundred feet, two hundred, he could not tell--was aglobe of crystal, fitted into the top of the tower as a jewel is held ina setting.
The air around it was shadowed with the same eerie gloom that hoveredoutside, but less dense, so that Stark could see the smouldering purplespark that burned within the globe, sending out its dark vibrations.
A globe of crystal, with a heart of sullen flame. Stark remembered thesword of Ban Cruach, and the white fire that burned in its hilt.
Two globes, the bright-cored and the dark. The sword of Ban Cruachtouched the blood with heat. The globe of the tower deadened the fleshwith cold. It was the same force, but at opposite ends of the spectrum.
Stark saw the cryptic controls of that glooming globe--a bank of them,on a wide stone ledge just inside the tower, close beside him. Therewere shining ones on that ledge tending those controls, and there wereother strange and massive mechanisms there too.
Flying spirals of ice climbed up inside the tower, spanning the greatstone well with spidery bridges, joining icy galleries. In some of thosegalleries, Stark vaguely glimpsed rigid, gleaming figures like statuesof ice, but he could not see them clearly as he was carried on.
He was being carried downward. He passed slits in the wall, and knewthat the pallid lights he had seen through them were the moving bodiesof the creatures as they went up and down these high-flung, icy bridges.He managed to turn his head to look down, and saw what was beneath him.
The well of the tower plunged down a good five hundred feet to bedrock,widening as it went. The web of ice-bridges and the spiral ways wentdown as well as up, and the creatures that carried him were movingsmoothly along a transparent ribbon of ice no more than a yard in width,suspended over that terrible drop.
Stark was glad that he could not move just then. One instinctive startof horror would have thrown him and his bearers to the rock below, andwould have carried Ciara with them.
Down and down, gliding in utter silence along the descending spiralribbon. The great glooming crystal grew remote above him. Ice was solidnow in the slots of the walls. He wondered if they had brought Balinthis way.
There were other openings, wide arches like the one they had broughttheir captives through, and these gave Stark brief glimpses of broadavenues and unguessable buildings, shaped from the pellucid ice andflooded with the soft radiance that was like eerie moonlight.
At length, on what Stark took to be the third level of the city, thecreatures bore him through one of these archways, into the streetsbeyond.
* * * * *
Below him now was the translucent thickness of ice that formed the floorof this level and the roof of the level beneath. He could see theblurred tops of delicate minarets, the clustering roofs that shone likechips of diamond.
Above him was an ice roof. Elfin spires rose toward it, delicate asneedles. Lacy battlements and little domes, buildings star-shaped,wheel-shaped, the fantastic, lovely shapes of snow-crystals, frostedover with a sparkling foam of light.
The people of the city gathered along the way to watch, a living,shifting rainbow of amethyst and rose and green, against the pureblue-white. And there was no least whisper of sound anywhere.
For some distance they went through a geometric maze of streets. Andthen there was a cathedral-like building all arched and spired,standing in the center of a twelve-pointed plaza. Here they turned, andbore their captives in.
Stark saw a vaulted roof, very slim and high, etched with a glitteringtracery that might have been carving of an alien sort, delicate as theweavings of spiders. The feet of his bearers were silent on the icypaving.
At the far end of the long vault sat seven of the shining ones in highseats marvellously shaped from the ice. And before them, grey-faced,shuddering with cold and not noticing it, drugged with a sick horror,stood Balin. He looked around once, and did not speak.
Stark was set on his feet, with Ciara beside him. He saw her face, andit was terrible to see the fear in her eyes, that had never shown fearbefore.
He himself was learning why men went mad beyond the Gates of Death.
Chill, dreadful fingers touched him expertly. A flash of pain drove downhis spine, and he could stand again.
The seven who sat in the high seats were motionless, their brighttendrils stirring with infinite delicacy as though they studied thethree humans who stood before them.
Stark thought he could feel a cold, soft fingering of his brain. It cameto him that these creatures were probably telepaths. They lacked organsof speech, and yet they must have some efficient means ofcommunications. Telepathy was not uncommon among the many races of theSolar System, and Stark had had experience with it before.
He forced his mind to relax. The alien impulse was instantly stronger.He sent out his own questing thought and felt it brush the edges of aconsciousness so utterly foreign to his own that he knew he could neverprobe it, even had he had the skill.
He learned one thing--that the shining faceless ones looked upon himwith equal horror and loathing. They recoiled from the unnatural humanfeatures, and most of all, most strongly, they abhorred the warmth ofhuman flesh. Even the infinitesimal amount of heat radiated by theirhalf-frozen human bodies caused the ice-folk discomfort.
Stark marshalled his imperfect abilities and projected a mental questionto the seven.
"What do you want of us?"
The answer came back, faint and imperfect, as though the gap betweentheir alien minds was almost too great to bridge. And the answer was oneword.
"_Freedom!_"
Balin spoke suddenly. He voiced only a whisper, and yet the sound wasshockingly loud in that crystal vault.
"They have asked me already. Tell them no, Stark! Tell them no!"
He looked at Ciara then, a look of murderous hatred. "If you turn themloose upon Kushat, I will kill you with my own hands before I die."
Stark spoke again, silently, to the seven. "I do not understand."
* * * * *
Again the struggling, difficult thought. "We are the old race, the kingsof the glacial ice. Once we held all the land beyond the mountains,outside the pass you call the Gates of Death."
Stark had seen the ruins of the towers out on the moors. He knew how fartheir kingdom had extended.
"We _controlled_ the ice, far outside the polar cap. Our towersblanketed the land with the dark force drawn from Mars itself, from themagnetic field of the planet. That radiation bars out heat, from theSun, and even from the awful winds that blow warm from the south. Sothere was never any thaw. Our cities were many, and our race was great.
"Then came Ban Cruach, from the south....
"He waged a war against us. He learned the secret of the crystal globes,and learned how to reverse their force and use it against us. He,leading his army, destroyed our towers one by one, and drove us back....
&nb
sp; "Mars needed water. The outer ice was melted, our lovely cities crumbledto nothing, so that creatures like Ban Cruach might have water! And ourpeople died.
"We retreated at the last, to this our ancient polar citadel behind theGates of Death. Even here, Ban Cruach followed. He destroyed even thistower once, at the time of the thaw. But this city is founded in polarice--and only the upper levels were harmed. Even Ban Cruach could nottouch the heart of the eternal polar cap of Mars!
"When he saw that he could not destroy us utterly, he set himself indeath to guard the Gates of Death with his blazing sword, that we mightnever again reclaim our ancient dominion.
"That is what we mean when we ask for freedom. We ask that you take awaythe sword of Ban Cruach, so that we may once again go out through theGates of Death!"
Stark cried aloud, hoarsely, "_No!_"
He knew the barren deserts of the south, the wastes of red dust, thedead sea bottoms--the terrible thirst of Mars, growing greater withevery year of the million that had passed since Ban Cruach locked theGates of Death.
He knew the canals, the pitiful waterways that were all that stoodbetween the people of Mars and extinction. He remembered the yearlyrelease from death when the spring thaw brought the water rushing downfrom the north.
He thought of these cold creatures going forth, building again theirgreat towers of stone, sheathing half a world in ice that would nevermelt. He thought of the people of Jekkara and Valkis and Barrakesh, ofthe countless cities of the south, watching for the flood that did notcome, and falling at last to mingle their bodies with the blowing dust.
He said again, "No. Never."
The distant thought-voice of the seven spoke, and this time the questionwas addressed to Ciara.
Stark saw her face. She did not know the Mars he knew, but she hadmemories of her own--the mountain-valleys of Mekh, the moors, the snowygorges. She looked at the shining ones in their high seats, and said,
"If I take that sword, it will be to use it against you as Ban Cruachdid!"
Stark knew that the seven had understood the thought behind her words.He felt that they were amused.
"The secret of that sword was lost a million years ago, the day BanCruach died. Neither you nor anyone now knows how to use it as he did.But the sword's radiations of warmth still lock us here.
"We cannot approach that sword, for its vibrations of heat slay us if wedo. But you warm-bodied ones can approach it. And you will do so, andtake it from its place. _One of you will take it!_"
They were very sure of that.
"We can see, a little way, into your evil minds. Much we do notunderstand. But--the mind of the large man is full of the woman's image,and the mind of the woman turns to him. Also, there is a link betweenthe large man and the small man, less strong, but strong enough."
The thought-voice of the seven finished, "The large man will take awaythe sword for us because he must--to save the other two."
Ciara turned to Stark. "They cannot force you, Stark. Don't let them. Nomatter what they do to me, don't let them!"
Balin stared at her with a certain wonder. "You would die, to protectKushat?"
"Not Kushat alone, though its people too are human," she said, almostangrily. "There are my red wolves--a wild pack, but my own. And others."She looked at Balin. "What do _you_ say? Your life against theNorlands?"
Balin made an effort to lift his head as high as hers, and the red jewelflashed in his ear. He was a man crushed by the falling of his world,and terrified by what his mad passion had led him into, here beyond theGates of Death. But he was not afraid to die.
He said so, and even Ciara knew that he spoke the truth.
But the seven were not dismayed. Stark knew that when theirthought-voice whispered in his mind,
"It is not death alone you humans have to fear, but the manner of yourdying. You shall see that, before you choose."
* * * * *
Swiftly, silently, those of the ice-folk who had borne the captives intothe city came up from behind, where they had stood withdrawn andwaiting. And one of them bore a crystal rod like a sceptre, with a sparkof ugly purple burning in the globed end.
Stark leaped to put himself between them and Ciara. He struck out,raging, and because he was almost as quick as they, he caught one of theslim luminous bodies between his hands.
The utter coldness of that alien flesh burned his hands as frost willburn. Even so, he clung on, snarling, and saw the tendrils writhe andstiffen as though in pain.
Then, from the crystal rod, a thread of darkness spun itself to touchhis brain with silence, and the cold that lies between the worlds.
He had no memory of being carried once more through the shimmeringstreets of that elfin, evil city, back to the stupendous well of thetower, and up along the spiral path of ice that soared those dizzyhundreds of feet from bedrock to the glooming crystal globe. But when heagain opened his eyes, he was lying on the wide stone ledge atice-level.
Beside him was the arch that led outside. Close above his head was thecontrol bank that he had seen before.
Ciara and Balin were there also, on the ledge. They leaned stifflyagainst the stone wall beside the control bank, and facing them was asquat, round mechanism from which projected a sort of wheel of crystalrods.
Their bodies were strangely rigid, but their eyes and minds were awake.Terribly awake. Stark saw their eyes, and his heart turned within him.
Ciara looked at him. She could not speak, but she had no need to. _Nomatter what they do to me...._
She had not feared the swordsmen of Kushat. She had not feared her redwolves, when he unmasked her in the square. She was afraid now. But shewarned him, ordered him not to save her.
_They cannot force you. Stark! Don't let them._
And Balin, too, pleaded with him for Kushat.
They were not alone on the ledge. The ice-folk clustered there, and outupon the flying spiral pathway, on the narrow bridges and the spans offragile ice, they stood in hundreds watching, eyeless, faceless, theirbodies drawn in rainbow lines across the dimness of the shaft.
Stark's mind could hear the silent edges of their laughter. Secret,knowing laughter, full of evil, full of triumph, and Stark was filledwith a corroding terror.
He tried to move, to crawl toward Ciara standing like a carven image inher black mail. He could not.
Again her fierce, proud glance met his. And the silent laughter of theice-folk echoed in his mind, and he thought it very strange that in thismoment, now, he should realize that there had never been another womanlike her on all of the worlds of the Sun.
The fear she felt was not for herself. It was for him.
Apart from the multitudes of the ice-folk, the group of seven stood uponthe ledge. And now their thought-voice spoke to Stark, saying,
"Look about you. Behold the men who have come before you through theGates of Death!"
Stark raised his eyes to where their slender fingers pointed, and sawthe icy galleries around the tower, saw more clearly the icy statues inthem that he had only glimpsed before.
* * * * *
Men, set like images in the galleries. Men whose bodies were sheathed ina glittering mail of ice, sealing them forever. Warriors, nobles,fanatics and thieves--the wanderers of a million years who had dared toenter this forbidden valley, and had remained forever.
He saw their faces, their tortured eyes wide open, their features frozenin the agony of a slow and awful death.
"They refused us," the seven whispered. "They would not take away thesword. And so they died, as this woman and this man will die, unless youchoose to save them.
"We will show you, human, how they died!"
One of the ice-folk bent and touched the squat, round mechanism thatfaced Balin and Ciara. Another shifted the pattern of control on themaster-bank.
The wheel of crystal rods on that squat mechanism began to turn. Therods blurred, became a disc that spun faster and faster.
High above in the top of the tower the great globe brooded, shrouded inits cloud of shimmering darkness. The disc became a whirling blur. Theglooming shadow of the globe deepened, coalesced. It began to lengthenand descend, stretching itself down toward the spinning disc.
The crystal rods of the mechanism drank the shadow in. And out of thatspinning blur there came a subtle weaving of threads of darkness, agossamer curtain winding around Ciara and Balin so that their outlinesgrew ghostly and the pallor of their flesh was as the pallor of snow atnight.
And still Stark could not move.
The veil of darkness began to sparkle faintly. Stark watched it, watchedthe chill motes brighten, watched the tracery of frost whiten overCiara's mail, touch Balin's dark hair with silver.
Frost. Bright, sparkling, beautiful, a halo of frost around theirbodies. A dust of splintered diamond across their faces, an aureole ofbrittle light to crown their heads.
Frost. Flesh slowly hardening in marbly whiteness, as the cold slowlyincreased. And yet their eyes still lived, and saw, and understood.
The thought-voice of the seven spoke again.
"You have only minutes now to decide! Their bodies cannot endure toomuch, and live again. Behold their eyes, and how they suffer!
"Only minutes, human! Take away the sword of Ban Cruach! Open for us theGates of Death, and we will release these two, alive."
Stark felt again the flashing stab of pain along his nerves, as one ofthe shining creatures moved behind him. Life and feeling came back intohis limbs.
He struggled to his feet. The hundreds of the ice-folk on the bridgesand galleries watched him in an eager silence.
He did not look at them. His eyes were on Ciara's. And now, her eyespleaded.
"Don't, Stark! Don't barter the life of the Norlands for me!"
The thought-voice beat at Stark, cutting into his mind with cruelurgency.
"Hurry, human! They are already beginning to die. Take away the sword,and let them live!"
Stark turned. He cried out, in a voice that made the icy bridgestremble:
"I will take the sword!"
He staggered out, then. Out through the archway, across the ice, towardthe distant cairn that blocked the Gates of Death.