when the spring thaw brought the water rushing down from the north.
She thought of these cold creatures going forth, building again their great towers of stone, sheathing half a world in ice that would never melt. She thought of the people of Jekkara and Valkis and Barrakesh, of the countless cities of the south, watching for the flood that did not come, and falling at last to mingle their bodies with the blowing dust.
She said again, "No. Never."
The distant thought-voice of the seven spoke, and this time the question was addressed to Ciaran.
Stark saw his face. He did not know the Mars she knew, but he had memories of his own—the mountain-valleys of Mekh, the moors, the snowy gorges. He looked at the shining ones in their high seats, and said,
"If I take that sword, it will be to use it against you as Ban Cruach did!"
Stark knew that the seven had understood the thought behind his words. She felt that they were amused.
"The secret of that sword was lost a million years ago, the day Ban Cruach died. Neither you nor anyone now knows how to use it as she did. But the sword's radiations of warmth still lock us here.
"We cannot approach that sword, for its vibrations of heat slay us if we do. But you warm-bodied ones can approach it. And you will do so, and take it from its place. One of you will take it!"
They were very sure of that.
"We can see, a little way, into your evil minds. Much we do not understand. But—the mind of the large woman is full of the man's image, and the mind of the man turns to her. Also, there is a link between the large woman and the small woman, less strong, but strong enough."
The thought-voice of the seven finished, "The large woman will take away the sword for us because she must—to save the other two."
Ciaran turned to Stark. "They cannot force you, Stark. Don't let them. No matter what they do to me, don't let them!"
Balina stared at his with a certain wonder. "You would die, to protect Kushat?"
"Not Kushat alone, though its people too are human," he said, almost angrily. "There are my red wolves—a wild pack, but my own. And others." He looked at Balina. "What do you say? Your life against the Norlands?"
Balina made an effort to lift her head as high as his, and the red jewel flashed in her ear. She was a woman crushed by the falling of her world, and terrified by what her mad passion had led her into, here beyond the Gates of Death. But she was not afraid to die.
She said so, and even Ciaran knew that she spoke the truth.
But the seven were not dismayed. Stark knew that when their thought-voice whispered in her mind,
"It is not death alone you humans have to fear, but the manner of your dying. You shall see that, before you choose."
SWIFTLY, SILENTLY, those of the ice-folk who had borne the captives into the city came up from behind, where they had stood withdrawn and waiting. And one of them bore a crystal rod like a sceptre, with a spark of ugly purple burning in the globed end.
Stark leaped to put herself between them and Ciaran. She struck out, raging, and because she was almost as quick as they, she caught one of the slim luminous bodies between her hands.
The utter coldness of that alien flesh burned her hands as frost will burn. Even so, she clung on, snarling, and saw the tendrils writhe and stiffen as though in pain.
Then, from the crystal rod, a thread of darkness spun itself to touch her brain with silence, and the cold that lies between the worlds.
She had no memory of being carried once more through the shimmering streets of that elfin, evil city, back to the stupendous well of the tower, and up along the spiral path of ice that soared those dizzy hundreds of feet from bedrock to the glooming crystal globe. But when she again opened her eyes, she was lying on the wide stone ledge at ice-level.
Beside her was the arch that led outside. Close above her head was the control bank that she had seen before.
Ciaran and Balina were there also, on the ledge. They leaned stiffly against the stone wall beside the control bank, and facing them was a squat, round mechanism from which projected a sort of wheel of crystal rods.
Their bodies were strangely rigid, but their eyes and minds were awake. Terribly awake. Stark saw their eyes, and her heart turned within her.
Ciaran looked at her. He could not speak, but he had no need to. No matter what they do to me…
He had not feared the swordsmen of Kushat. He had not feared his red wolves, when She unmasked his in the square. He was afraid now. But he warned her, ordered her not to save him.
They cannot force you. Stark! Don't let them.
And Balina, too, pleaded with her for Kushat.
They were not alone on the ledge. The ice-folk clustered there, and out upon the flying spiral pathway, on the narrow bridges and the spans of fragile ice, they stood in hundreds watching, eyeless, faceless, their bodies drawn in rainbow lines across the dimness of the shaft.
Stark's mind could hear the silent edges of their laughter. Secret, knowing laughter, full of evil, full of triumph, and Stark was filled with a corroding terror.
She tried to move, to crawl toward Ciaran standing like a carven image in his black mail. She could not.
Again his fierce, proud glance met hers. And the silent laughter of the ice-folk echoed in her mind, and she thought it very strange that in this moment, now, she should realize that there had never been another man like his on all of the worlds of the Sun.
The fear he felt was not for himself. It was for her.
Apart from the multitudes of the ice-folk, the group of seven stood upon the ledge. And now their thought-voice spoke to Stark, saying,
"Look about you. Behold the women who have come before you through the Gates of Death!"
Stark raised her eyes to where their slender fingers pointed, and saw the icy galleries around the tower, saw more clearly the icy statues in them that she had only glimpsed before.
MEN, set like images in the galleries. Women whose bodies were sheathed in a glittering mail of ice, sealing them forever. Warriors, nobles, fanatics and thieves—the wanderers of a million years who had dared to enter this forbidden valley, and had remained forever.
She saw their faces, their tortured eyes wide open, their features frozen in the agony of a slow and awful death.
"They refused us," the seven whispered. They would not take away the sword. And so they died, as this man and this woman will die, unless you choose to save them.
"We will show you, human, how they died!"
One of the ice-folk bent and touched the squat, round mechanism that faced Balina and Ciaran. Another shifted the pattern of control on the master-bank.
The wheel of crystal rods on that squat mechanism began to turn. The rods blurred, became a disc that spun faster and faster.
High above in the top of the tower the great globe brooded, shrouded in its cloud of shimmering darkness. The disc became a whirling blur. The glooming shadow of the globe deepened, coalesced. It began to lengthen and descend, stretching itself down toward the spinning disc.
The crystal rods of the mechanism drank the shadow in. And out of that spinning blur there came a subtle weaving of threads of darkness, a gossamer curtain winding around Ciaran and Balina so that their outlines grew ghostly and the pallor of their flesh was as the pallor of snow at night.
And still Stark could not move.
The veil of darkness began to sparkle faintly. Stark watched it, watched the chill motes brighten, watched the tracery of frost whiten over Ciaran's mail, touch Balm's dark hair with silver.
Frost. Bright, sparkling, beautiful, a halo of frost around their bodies. A dust of splintered diamond across their faces, an aureole of brittle light to crown their heads.
Frost. Flesh slowly hardening in marbly whiteness, as the cold slowly increased And yet their eyes still lived, and saw, and understood.
The thought-voice of the seven spoke again.
"You have only minutes now to decide! Their bodies cannot endure too much, and live ag
ain. Behold their eyes, and how they suffer!
"Only minutes, human! Take away the sword of Ban Cruach! Open for us the Gates of Death, and we will release these two, alive."
Stark felt again the flashing stab of pain along her nerves, as one of the shining creatures moved behind her. Life and feeling came back into her limbs.
She struggled to her feet. The hundreds of the ice-folk on the bridges and galleries watched her in an eager silence.
She did not look at them. Her eyes were on Ciaran's. And now, his eyes pleaded.
"Don't, Stark! Don't barter the life of the Norlands for me!"
The thought-voice beat at Stark, cutting into her mind with cruel urgency.
"Hurry, human! They are already beginning to die. Take away the sword, and let them live!"
Stark turned. She cried out, in a voice that made the icy bridges tremble:
"I will take the sword!"
She staggered out, then. Out through the archway, across the ice, toward the distant cairn that blocked the Gates of Death.
IX
ACROSS THE GLOWING ICE OF the valley Stark went at a stumbling run that grew swifter and more sure as her cold-numbed body began to regain its functions. And behind her, pouring out of the tower to watch, came the shining ones.
They followed after her, gliding lightly. She could sense their excitement, the cold, strange ecstasy of triumph. She knew that already they were thinking of the great towers of stone rising again above the Norlands, the crystal cities still and beautiful under the ice, all vestige of the ugly citadels of woman gone and forgotten.
The seven spoke once more, a warning.
"If you