"A mate—?"
"A mate fit for her kind of tirot." Xaymar laughed, and of a sudden the spell of nameless menace and infinite evil Haral had caught before rang in the sound. "I gave her to Sark."
"Sark—!" Haral reeled.
"Yes, Sark." The woman moved back one sinuous step, then another, like a great cat toying with its prey. "He asked that I let him take her away from Ulna with him. I said no. But then, later, it came to me that I could devise no greater suffering for her, so I sent her to him."
"You ... sent her to that creature?"
"Yes. Already she's on her way there." A fiend would have envied Xaymar's smile. "That was why the coleopteron was wailing for me at the shaft below here. He sought my last decision—and I said, 'Yes. Good riddance. Let Sark have her.'"
Through a scarlet haze, Haral cried out, "Curse you, Xaymar!"
He was moving forward in the same instant, lashing out at her, and he saw her mouth go slack with shock at his sudden onslaught.
Then his fist hammered home on her jaw: The force of it lifted her and slammed her back across the bubble, to land in a heap on the floor, crumpled and unconscious.
Then the haze cleared. Numbly, Haral stared down at her.