No one, nothing, stirred. Only the dry wind sighed in the empty houses.
Stark went out, across the open space, and nothing happened. He flung open the door of Kala's dive.
Yellow light spilled out, and a choking wave of hot and stuffy air. Inside, there were tall lamps with quartz lenses, each of which poured down a beam of throbbing, gold-orange light. And in the little pools of radiance, on filthy furs and cushions on the floor, lay men and women whose faces were slack and bestial.
Stark realized now what secret vice Kala sold here. Shanga—the going-back—the radiation that caused temporary artificial atavism and let men wallow for a time in beasthood. It was supposed to have been stamped out when the Lady Fand's dark Shanga ring had been destroyed. But it still persisted, in places like this outside the law.
He looked for Freka, and recognized the tall barbarian. He was sprawled under one of the Shanga-lamps, eyes closed, face brutish, growling and twitching in sleep like the beast he had temporarily become.
A voice spoke from behind Stark's shoulder. "I am Kala. What do you wish, Outlander?"
He turned. Kala might have been beautiful once, a thousand years ago as you reckon sin. She wore still the sweet chiming bells in her hair, and Stark thought of Fianna. The woman's ravaged face turned him sick. It was like the reedy, piping music, woven out of the very heart of evil.
Yet her eyes were shrewd, and he knew that she had not missed his searching look around the room, nor his interest in Freka. There was a note of warning in her voice.
He did not want trouble, yet. Not until he found some hint of the trap Fianna had told him of.
He said, "Bring me wine."