"At her command, the storm-clouds gathered? She hurled the lightning bolts against her enemies?"
"So it is written in our sacred books."
"But then she went away," Sark murmured. "She left all you who were her people."
The girl called Kyla did not answer.
"Or did she?" Of a sudden the raider's lidded eyes were not so sleepy. His bulbous head came forward just a fraction. "There is another story, priestess ... a story that says the goddess Xaymar was truly woman—the most beautiful woman your world had ever seen. And because she was woman, human, she could not bear the thought that she must age and wither. So she commanded that she be placed, still young and in the full bloom of her beauty, within a secret crypt in frozen sleep, so that she might live forever as she had been."
For an instant Haral thought he could see a new tremor touch the priestess Kyla's slim young body. But only for an instant. Then her shoulders straightened. Her tone was cool, disdainful: "These are old wives' tales our stupid Ulnos tell—empty, without meaning. Xaymar was not even of my people, if indeed she ever lived. The old books say she came from a forgotten alien race, long vanished."
Haral felt a sudden rush of admiration—a kinship, almost, born of the girl's poise and unbending courage.
What path had she traveled to this final meeting? What forces had driven her to do whatever she had done to catch Sark's notice? Why was she playing for such stakes in a mad world filled with monsters?
What forces? His jaw tightened. Why had he, himself, come? Why was he throwing his own life into the balance? There could be no answer; not really. Not even five hundred samori were enough to account for it. A man did the things that he must do—played the crazy game as he saw it and made up the reasons later; that was all. Raider, priestess, adventurer—each carved his own destiny.