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....