well, they'll do nicely without me. I'm an old woman, and I've a right to choose my own place to die in. I'm going back to Earth, with you.'
Stark glanced at her. 'I'm not going to Earth.'
Larrabee sighed. 'No. No, I suppose you're not. After all, you're no Earthwoman, really, except for an accident of blood. Where are you going?'
'I don't know. Away from Venus, but I don't know yet where.'
Larrabee's dark eyes surveyed her shrewdly. ' 'A restless, cold-eyed tiger of a woman,' that's what Varran said. She's lost something, he said. She'll look for it all her life, and never find it.'
After that there was silence. The red fog wrapped them, and the wind rose and sent them scudding before it.
Then, faint and far off, there came a moaning wail, a sound like broken chanting that turned Stark's flesh cold.
All on board heard it. They listened, utterly silent, their eyes wide, and somewhere a man began to weep.
Stark shook herself. 'It's only the wind,' she said roughly, 'in the rocks by the strait.'
The sound rose and fell, weary, infinitely mournful, and the part of Stark that was N'Chaka said that she lied. It was not the wind that keened so sadly through the mists. It was the voices of the Lost Ones who were forever lost—Zareth, sleeping in the hall of kings, and all the others who would never leave the dreaming city and the forest, never find the light again.
Stark shivered, and turned away, watching the leaping fires of the strait sweep toward them.
THE END
Artwork by Robert Rizzato
https://www.flickr.com/photos/rizzato/4326593790/in/faves-jekkarapress/
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/deed.en
JEKKARA PRESS
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https://jekkarapress.wordpress.com
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