Now, for the first time, the woman men knew as Xaymar gave the gross raider heed. Twisting, she faced him. Her hand touched the cord that hung down beside the cot on which she rested, and even that simple gesture was somehow pregnant with a nameless menace that halted Sark and his crewmen in their tracks.
In a voice suddenly cold as Pluto's ice-things, she said, "If he dies, creature, you die with him!"
For an instant there was a silence that echoed vibrant tension. Then, calmly, Xaymar turned again to Haral. "And you, blue one—?" she queried. "What of you? Why do you seek me?"
Haral let her words hang for a moment. He looked out across the crypt ... past Sark, the crewmen, Kyla....
Kyla. She, too, rode with destiny; but it was a different destiny than his, a destiny that tolled her doom already. The lines that etched her face seemed even deeper now, set off by the contrast with the shimmering spun gold of her hair. There was more than beauty in her. There was spirit, also, born of stark courage, and all at once the very sight of her brought a poignancy that stabbed him like a knife.
But he pushed it back, and let his laugh ring out. "I seek the only thing in the void worth seeking!" he slashed recklessly. "I seek power, Xaymar—the power to fulfill my destiny and carve an empire. But I never thought to find the key to it locked in the brain of a woman as beautiful as you, or I'd have sought it sooner!"
Xaymar's ripe lips parted. "Your tongue is skilled, blue man! It alone should carry you to your empire!"
"But does that skilled tongue have truth, too, my goddess? Or is it so practiced that now it lies by instinct?" It was Kyla who lashed out, from a place close by the dais. Passion had brought hot color to her cheeks.
"They lie, my goddess! All these aliens lie!" she rushed on fiercely. "Hate and greed are the only creed they know. Already Ulna lies drenched in the blood they've shed—the blood of your followers, ground down by these monsters to slaves or less. Now, still thirsting for more wealth, more power, they seek you, too, my goddess! They would make you their slave—tear your secrets from you, that they may use the power that lies within the lightning to reach out across the void for yet more worlds to conquer—"