Even Sark....
The raider chief was smiling now—a slow, smirking, secretive smile that was somehow horrible and loathsome. "But the other part, priestess? Is it true? Was your Xaymar really sealed in frozen sleep in a hidden vault here on your pygmy world of Ulna?"
The girl's slim shoulders lifted in a shrug. "Who knows? We Shamon only let the tales go on to satisfy the Ulnos."
"What? You do not know?" Sark's fat-rimmed eyes now were bright and mocking; and, watching him, Haral gave new weight to the raider's craft and menace. "But I had heard a different story, Priestess Kyla! They told me you did know—that you knew more of it than any other."
It was coming now, the moment of crisis. Haral could see it in their faces.
Grimly, he gripped his light-lance.
But Kyla still faced the raider chieftain boldly. "I cannot help what others say. I do not know."
The squat monster in the riding-chair leaned back once more, still smiling his secretive, sinister smile. A strange horror clung to his very calm, the deadly benignity of his soft-spoken words. It was as if he were some great toad, toying tenderly with a lovely, captive moth that its agony might last the longer.
"They say your whole life is given to a search for Xaymar, priestess. That you dream of the days when the Shamon still ruled Ulna, and so you seek your goddess's hidden crypt, in order to rouse her from her sleep and turn her powers against all those whom you call alien." He licked his lips, and his head seemed to sink between his shoulders. "Some claim you even know where the crypt is hidden, and could go there now, were it not for fear of the thinking beetles, the coleoptera."