Xaymar, passionate goddess. A word, a myth, a fading picture in forgotten books. A phantasm rising out of these ghostly, gutted cities, these ruins dead a thousand years.
Yet here she lay in this deep-sunk vault, nude save for the short, jeweled veil that masked the top half of her face. Her body still gleamed like a supple ivory statue, a vision of sleek, ripe-curved perfection. Rippling waves of jet-black hair framed the pale, veiled oval of her face in a darkly radiant nimbus. A faint rose glow touched lips and breasts. It seemed almost as if she could have been sleeping here mere hours only, instead of eons; as if she were still alive and vibrant ... all woman; all terrible, voluptuous promise....
The Shamon priest was bent with age, his face a deep-seamed net of wrinkles. The short cloak of his order, vivid with a hundred contrasting shades of blue, covered his thin shoulders, and a toloid tablet emblazoned with a stylized representation of a lightning bolt, Xaymar's emblem, hung suspended over his bony chest.
He said: "I want you to kill a woman."
Across the table, the blue warrior called Haral sat very still. He did not speak.
The old Shamon hurried on: "They say the same, all those to whom I've spoken—that you alone, of all the warriors here on Ulna, would dare to go against the raider Sark. The rest are brave until they hear his name; then, quickly, they sing another song. But you—" He hesitated, fumbling, and peered uncertainly at Haral out of rheumy, fading eyes. "Tell me, blue one, is it true that you went alone to Eros and slew the tyrant lord Querroon because he'd dared to put a price upon your head? And that then you defied the Federation to try to hang you, and slashed your way through the whole Federation fleet with your single ship?"
"It's true."
"You see—?" the oldster cried in quavering triumph. "You see it, Sha Haral? You are a warrior worthy of the name! In you there's iron instead of meal. That is why I come to you to kill this woman—"
"A woman—?" Haral repeated dully. He swirled the fiery kabat in his glass. "Why should I kill a woman?"