For a moment the girl's eyes closed. Then, slowly, they opened once more, and she stood erect in the Pervods' grasp. Her breath came faster. "Do you think me so weak that I'd betray my goddess and my people to save myself?" she cried passionately. A wave of wild, half-hysterical laughter shook her. "I know what you want! You seek not Xaymar, but Xaymar's secret—the way she harnessed the power that lies within the lightning, a power so great that with it you might rule the universe! But you will not have it! Bring on your crew, your coleoptera—"
Haral went rigid in the hwalon's saddle. The girl's words rang in his ears, his brain.
There it was! There lay the secret, the prize that had lured Sark here to Ulna!
A prize of power.
The search for it had led this slim girl-priestess here, to death, dishonor.
The fear that such a secret might go to Sark, be lost to Ulna, had spurred the old high priest, Namboina, to dark plots and plans for murder.
Power! Haral's fist clenched. The lust for it had driven him on bloody courses that stretched across half this solar system. It had earned him a name, that lust; and then it had put a price on his head to match it, till at last he'd had no choice but to flee out here, beyond all law, to this mad, twisted world of Ulna.
And now—?
Within him his heart was pounding, pounding, like the beat of one of Titan's great corba dia; and of a sudden he knew it was destiny that had brought him to the blood and dirt and heat of this foul arena.