Kieron stirred, the pulsing ache in his side piercing the reddish veil of unconsciousness. Under him, he could feel wet stones that stank of death and filth. He moved painfully, and the throbbing agony grew worse, making him teeter precariously between consciousness and the dark.
He was stiff and cold. Hurt badly, too, he thought vaguely. His wounds had not been tended. Very carefully, he opened his eyes. They told him what he had already known. He was in a dark cell, filthy and damp. A sick chill shook him. Teeth chattering, huddled on the stone floor, Kieron sank again into unconsciousness.
When he awoke again, he was burning with fever and a cold bowl of solidified, greasy gruel lay beside him. His tongue felt thick and swollen, but the sharp agony of his wounded side had subsided to a dull hurt. With a great effort, he dragged himself into a corner of the dungeon and propped himself up facing the iron-bound door.
His searching hands found that he had been stripped of his harness and weapons. He was naked, smeared with filth and dried blood. As he moved he felt a renewed flow of warmth flooding down from his torn flank. The wound had reopened. Sweat was streaking the caked blood on his cheek. His mind wandered in a feverish delirium — a nightmare dream in which the tall, coldly arrogant figure of
Freka seemed to fill all space and all time. Kieran's over-bright eyes glittered with animal hate…
Somehow, he felt that the hated Kalgan was nearby. He tried to keep his eyes open, but the lids seemed weighted. His head sagged and the fever took him again into the ebony darkness of some fantastic intergalactic night where wierd shapes danced and whirled in hideous joyousness. .
The rattling of the door-lock woke him. It might have been minutes later or days. Kieron had no way of knowing. He felt light-headed and giddy. He watched the door open with fever-bright eyes. A jailer carrying a flambeau entered and the light blinded Kieron. He shielded his face with his hand. There was a voice speaking to him. A voice he knew. . and hated. With a shuddering effort, he took a grip on his staggering mind, his hate sustaining him now. Moving his hands away from his face, he looked up — into the icy eyes of Freka the Unknown.
"So you're awake at last," the Kalgan said.
Kieron made no reply. He could feel the fury burning deep inside him.
Freka held a jewelled dagger in his hands, toying with it idly. Kieron watched the shards of light leaping from the faceted gems in the liquid torchlight. The slender blade shimmered, blue and silvery in the Kalgan's hands.
"I have been told that the Lady Alys was with you — here on Kalgan. Is this true?"
Alys. . Kieron thought vaguely of her for a moment, but somehow the picture brought sadness. He put her out of his mind and squinted up at Freka's gemmed dagger, unable to take his eyes from the glittering weapon.
"Can you speak?" demanded Freka. "Was Toran's sister with you?"
Kieron watched the weapon, a feral brillance growing Hike a flame in his dark eyes.
Freka shrugged. "Very well, Kieron. It makes no difference. Does it interest you to know that the armies are gathering? Earth will be ours within four weeks." His voice was cold, unemotional. "You realize, of course, that you cannot be allowed to live."
Kieron said nothing. Very carefully he gathered his strength. The dagger…the dagger…!
"I will not risk war with Valkyr by killing you now. But you will be tried by a council of star-kings on Earth when we have done what we must do…"
Kieron stared hard at the slender weapon, his hate pounding in his fevered mind. He drew a deep, shuddering breath. Freka spun the blade idly, setting the jewels afire.
"We should have taken you the moment Landor was missed," mused the Kalgan. "But.. it really doesn't matter now…"
Kieron's taut muscles uncoiled in a snakelike, lashing movement. He hit Freka below the knees with all his fevered strength and the Kalgan went down without a sound, the slim dagger clattering on the slimy floor of the cell. The guard leaped forward. Kieron's searching hand closed about the hilt of the dagger. With a sound of pure animal rage in his throat he drove it into Freka's unprotected chest. Twice again his hand rose and fell, and then the guard caught him full in the face with a booted foot and the light of the torch faded again into inky blackness…
In the darkness, time lost its meaning. Kieron woke a dozen times, feeling the dull throbbing ache of his wounds and then fading again into unconsciousness. He ate — or was fed — enough to keep him alive, but he had no memory of it. He floated in a red-tinged sea of black, unreal, frightening. He screamed or sobbed as the phantasms of his sick dreams dictated, but through it all ran a single thread of elation. Freka, the hated one, was dead. No horror of nightmare or delirium could strip him of that one grip on life. Freka was dead. He remembered vaguely the feel of the dagger plunging again and again into his tormentor's breast. Sometimes he even forgot why he had hated Freka, but he clung to the knowledge that he had kiHled him the way a drowning man clings to the last suffocating breath.
Sounds filtered into Kieron's dungeon. Sounds that were familiar. The hissing roar of spaceships. Then later the awful susurration of mob sounds. Kieron lay sprawled on the stones of his cell-floor, not hearing, lost in the fantasmagoric stupor of delirium. His wounds still untended, onty the magnificent body of a warrior helped him cling to the thread of life.
Other sounds came. The crash of rams and the clatter of falling masonry. The shrieks of men and women dying. The ringing cacophony of weapons and the curses of fight-lug men. Hours passed and the din grew louder, closer, in the heart of the Citadel of Neg itself. The torches on the outer cellblocks guttered out and were left untended. The rounds of fighting rose to a wild pitch, interlaced with the Inhuman, animal sounds of a mob gone mad.
At last Kieron stirred, some of the familiar sounds of battle striking buried chords in his fevered mind. He listened to the advancing clash of weapons until it rang just beyond his dungeon door.
He dragged himself into his corner again and crouched there, the feral light in his eyes brilliant now. His hands Itched for killing. He flexed the fingers painfully and waited.
The silence was sudden and as complete as the hush of the tomb.
Kieron waited.
The door flung wide, and men bearing torches rushed into the cell. Kieron lunged savagely for the first one, hands seeking a throat.
"Kieron!" Nevitta threw himself backward violently. Kieron clung to him, his face a fevered mask of hate. "Kieron! It is I. . Nevitta!"
Kieron's hands fell away from the old warrior and he stood swaying, squinting against the light of the torches. "Nevitta Nevitta?"
A wild laugh came from the prisoner's cracked lips. He looked about him, into the strained faces of his own fighting men.
He took one step and pitched forward into the arms of Nevitta, who carried him like a child up into the light, tears streaking his grizzled cheeks…
For three weeks Alys and Nevitta nursed Kieron, sucking the poison of his untended wounds with their mouths and bathing him to break the fiery grip of the fever. At last they won. Kieron opened his eyes — and they were sane and clear.
"How long?" Kieron asked faintly.
"We were gone from Kalgan twenty days. . you have lain here twenty-one," Alys said thankfully.
"Why did you come back here?" Kieron demanded bitterly. "You have lost an Empire!"
"We came for you, Kieron," Nevitta said. "For our king."
"But. . Alys…" Kieron protested.
"I would not have the Great Throne, Kieron," said Alys, "if it meant leaving you to rot in a cell!"
Kieron turned his face to the wall. Because of him, the star-kings fought Ivane's battle. And by now they would have won. The only thing that had been done was the killing of the treacherous Freka. He held Kalgan now, for — the Valkyrs had returned seeking their Warlord after Freka's plan had stripped the planet of fighting men — and the mobs had done the Valkyr's work for them. But two worlds were not an Empire of stars. Alys had been cheated. Because of him.
No! thought Kieron, by the Seven Hells, no! They could not be defeated so easily. There were five thousand warriors with him now. If need be, he would fight the Imperium's massed forces to win Alys' rightful place on the throne of Gilmer of Kaidor!
"Let me up," Kieron demanded. "If we hit them on Earth before they have a chance to consolidate, there's still a chance!" -
"There is no hurry, Kieron," said Nevitta holding him in the bed with a great hand. "Freka and the star-kings have already…"
"Freka!" Kieron sat bolt upright.
"Why, yes. ." murmured Nevitta in perplexity. "Freka."
"That's impossible!"
"We have had information from the Imperial City, Kieron. Freka is there," said Alys.
Kieron sank back on the pillows. Had he dreamed killing the Kalgan? No! It wasn't possible! He had driven the blade into his chest three times… driven it deep.
With an effort he rose from the bed. "Order my charger, Nevitta!"
"But sir!"
"Quickly, Nevitta! There is no time!"
Nevitta saluted reluctantly and withdrew.
"Help me with my harness, Alys," ordered Kieron forgetful of majesty.
"Kieron, you can't ride!"
"I have to ride, Alys. Listen to me. I drove a dagger into Freka three times. . and he has not died! One man can tell us why, and we must know. That man is
Geller of the Marshes!"
Neg was a shambles. The advent of the Valkyrs had been a signal for the brutish population to go mad. Mobs had thronged the streets, smashing, killing and looting. The few Kalgan warriors left behind to guard the city had had to aid the Valkyrs in restoring order. It seemed to Kieron, as he rode along the now sullenly silent streets, that Kalgan and Neg had been deliberately abandoned as having served a purpose. If Freka still lived, as they said, then he was something unique among men, and not meant for so unimportant a world as Kalgan.
Shops and houses had been gutted by fire. Goods of all kinds were strewn about the streets, and here and there a body — twisted and dism embered — awaited the harassed burial detachments that roamed the shattered megalopolis.
Kieron and Alys rode slowly toward the marshy slums of the lower city, Nevitta following them at a short distance. The three war horses, creatures bred to war and destruction, paced along easily, flaring nostrils taking in the familiar smells of a ruined city.
Along the street of the Black Flames there was nothing left standing whole. Every hovel, every tenement had been gutted and looted by the mobs. Presently, Kieron drew rein before a shuttered shanty between two structures of
fire-blackened stone.
Nevitta rode up with a protest. "Why do you seek this beloved of demons, Kieron?" he asked fearfully. "No good can come of this!"
Kieron stared at the shanty. It stared back at him with veiled ghoulish eyes. The writhing mists shrouded the grey, street in the eternal twilight of Kalgan. Kieron felt his hands trembling on the reins. This was the lair of the warlock.
The stench of the marshes was thick and now the mists turned to soft rain. Kieron dismounted.
"Wait for me here," he ordered Nevitta and Alys.
With pounding heart, he drew his sword and started for the door that gaped like the black mouth of a plague victim. Alys touched his elbow, disregarding his instructions. Her eyes were bright with fear, but she followed him closely. Secretly glad of her companionship, Kieron breathed a prayer to his Valkyr gods and stepped inside.
The place was a wreck. Old books lay everywhere, ripped and tattered. In a corner, someone had tried to make a bonfire of a pile of manuscripts and broken furniture and had half succeeded.
"The mob has been here," Alys said succinctly.
Kieron led the way through the rubble toward the door of a back room. Carefully, he pushed it ajar with the point of his blade. It creaked menacingly, revealing another chamber — one filled with strange machines and twisted tubes of glass. Great black boxes stood along one wall, coils of bright wire running into the jumbled mass of shattered machines that dominated the center of the room. The air of the cold, silent room had a strange and unpleasant tang. The smell, thought the Valkyr, of the Great Destroyer!
The tip of his sword touched one of the bright copper coils springing from the row of black boxes along the wall,
and a tiny blue spark leaped up the blade. Kieron yanked his weapon away, his heart racing wildly. A thin curl of smoke hung in the air, and the steel of the blade was pitted. Kieron fought down the urge to run in terror.
"I'm afraid, Kieron!" whispered Alys, clinging to him. Kieron took her hand and moved cautiously around the pile of broken machinery. He found Geller then, and tried to stop Alys from seeing.
"The Great Destroyer he served failed him," Kieron said slowly…The warlock was dead. The mob, terrified — and hating what they could not understand — had killed him cruelly. I he staring eyes mocked Kieron, the blackened tongue lolled stupidly out of the dry lips. Geller's mystery, thought Kieron, was still safe with him….
On the way out, Kieron stopped and picked up the remnants of a book of sigils. It was incredibly old, for the characters on the cover were those of the legendary First Empire. With some difficulty he made out the title.
"'Perpetually Regenerating Warps and their Application in Interstellar Engines'…."
The words meant nothing to him. He dropped the magic hook and picked up two others. This time his eyes widened.
"What is it, Kieron?" Alys asked fearfully.
"Long ago," Kieron said thoughtfully, "on Valkyr, it was said that the ancients of the First Empire were familiar with the secrets of the Great Destroyer…"
"That's true. That is why the Interregnum came, and the dark ages," said Alys.
"I wonder," mused Kieron looking at the books. "What was this Geller known best for?"
Alys shuddered. "For his homunculi."
"The ancients, it is said, knew many things. Even bow to make. . artificial servants. Robots, they were called." He handed her the book. "Can you read this ancient script?"
Alys read aloud, her voice unsteady.
"'First Principles of Robotics.'"
"And this one?"
"'Incubation and Gestation of Android?. .!"
Kieron of Valkyr stood in the silent, wrecked laboratory of the dead warlock Geller, his medieval mind trying to break free of the bondage of a millennium of superstition and ignorance. He understood now… many things.