"Another task—?"
"Yes, now that you two have opened up the way." Sark chuckled, deep in his throat. His fat-rimmed eyes gleamed like tiny, vicious stars. "We go now to waken the living goddess, Xaymar, queen of storms, so that she can deliver her secret into my hands!"
CHAPTER V
There lay the woman!
Xaymar. Woman and death, the end of a madman's quest.
The great crystal globe that cased her rested atop a dais in the center of an echoing, high-roofed chamber. Pulsing, aglow with strange life, its radiance fought back the crypt's impinging gloom.
Haral swayed for a moment under the impact of the sight, his wounds forgotten. Excitement raced through him.
But Sark's men held him by either arm, and others penned him in front and behind, and Sark himself sat in the riding-chair mere feet away, his hand never straying from the cymosynthesizer switch.
And there was Kyla, pale and forlorn, in a Thorian's tentacled grasp.