The rocketing roller cut short her scream.
Then the creature was bowling to a stop on the ring's far side. A hush fell over the great vaulted hall.
Stiffly, the rawboned Baemae youth dragged himself up from the place where he had fallen. Wordless, shambling, he crossed the pit to where the crumpled, broken thing that had been his sister lay; he knelt there beside her for a moment.
Then he arose again and stared up at the packed, engulfing mass of Kukzubas barons and their ladies ... looked on beyond and above them to the dais—to Vydys and to Zenaor.
The silence echoed.
Thick-voiced, he spoke, then: "You've killed her, curse you—you filth that call yourselves Kukzubas barons!"
"True, carrion." This from dark Vydys. "And now you die beside her!"
She concentrated. The roller turned, wending its blood-trailing way out from the wall once more.
But incredibly, the youth who wore Vydys' black-and-silver livery gave the gore-drenched thing no heed. Slowly at first, then faster and faster, his shoulders shook till he burst out in a wild gale of laughter.