"Of course. I saw that, too. But I do not care." Again Xaymar smiled her cryptic smile. "Now, come! You shall see why I await him without fear!"
They walked on again. Then, at last, there was a door ahead and, beyond it, a long, dark passageway.
Haral frowned as he strode through the murk beside the woman. Once more, as he had a dozen times before, he thought of Kyla, with her dreams and rippling golden hair and slim young body. She was so different from this dark voluptuary who was a living goddess. Yet she, too, had shared the dangers of this adventure with him.
What had happened to her? He wondered. But something told him to make no query.
Another door loomed. Xaymar cried, "Behold my warriors!"
She flung the portal wide.
Haral stared.
For here were no coleoptera. Here lay what appeared to be a mausoleum, instead—another vast, echoing chamber, dim-lighted and stretching out as far as the eye could see, with banked, sealed crypts rising row on row from floor to ceiling, like some monstrous, many-celled honeycomb.
Xaymar asked: "Now do you see why I slept so willingly for a thousand years, my warrior? In each cell here is sealed an egg, preserved secure from harm and the ravages of time. From each egg, when the time to strike has come, will spring one of my fighting coleoptera—"
She broke off; hurried the blue man up a ramp to another level.