Carse followed him into a dark huddle of crumbling stone. He took a little krypton-lamp from his belt pouch and touched it to a glow. Penkawr knelt and scrambled among the broken stones of the floor until he brought forth a long thin bundle wrapped in rags.
With a strange reverence, almost with fear, he began to unwrap it. Carse knelt beside him. He realized that he was holding his breath, watching the Martian’s lean dark hands, waiting. Something in the man’s attitude had caught him into the same taut mood.
The lamplight struck a spark of deep fire from a half-covered jewel, and then a clean brilliance of metal. Carse leaned forward. Penkawr’s eyes, slanted wolf-eyes yellow as topaz, glanced up and caught the Earthman’s hard blue gaze, held it for a moment, then shifted away. Swiftly he drew the last covering from the object on the floor.
Carse did not move. The thing lay bright and burning between them and neither man stirred nor seemed even to breathe. The red glow of the lamp painted their faces, lean bone above iron shadows, and the eyes of Matthew Carse were the eyes of a man who looks upon a miracle.
After a long while he reached out and took the thing into his hands. The beautiful and deadly slimness of it, the length and perfect balance, the black hilt and guard that fitted perfectly his large hand, the single smoky jewel that seemed to watch him with a living wisdom, the name etched in most rare and most ancient symbols upon the blade. He spoke, and his voice was no more than a whisper.
“The sword of Rhiannon!”
Penkawr let out his breath in a sharp sigh. “I found it,” he said. “I found it.”
Carse said, “Where?”
“It does not matter where. I found it. It is yours—for a small price.”
“A small price.” Carse smiled. “A small price for the sword of a god.”