in her dark eyes.
Freka shrugged. 'Very well, Kiera. It makes no difference. Does it interest you to know that the armies are gathering? Earth will be ours within four weeks.' Her voice was cold, unemotional. 'You realize, of course, that you cannot be allowed to live.'
Kiera said nothing. Very carefully she gathered her 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-queens on Earth when we have done what we must do ...'
Kiera stared hard at the slender weapon, her hate pounding in her fevered mind. She drew a deep, shuddering breath. Freka spun the blade idly, setting the jewels afire.
'We should have taken you the moment Landora was missed,' mused the Kalgan. 'But .. . it really doesn't matter now ...'
Kiera's taut muscles uncoiled in a snakelike, lashing movement. She hit Freka below the knees with all her 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. Kiera's searching hand closed about the hilt of the dagger. With a sound of pure animal rage in her throat she drove it into Freka's unprotected bosom . Twice again her hand rose and fell, and then the guard caught her 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. Kiera woke a dozen times, feeling the dull throbbing ache of her wounds and then fading again into unconsciousness. She ate—or was fed—enough to keep her alive, but she had no memory of it. She floated in a red-tinged sea of black, unreal, frightening. She screamed or sobbed as the phantasms of her sick dreams dictated, but through it all ran a single thread of elation. Freka, the hated one, was dead. No horror of night stallion or delirium could strip her of that one grip on life. Freka was dead. She remembered vaguely the feel of the dagger plunging again and again into her tormentor's breast. Sometimes she even forgot why she had hated Freka, but she clung to the knowledge that she had killed her the way a drowning woman clings to the last suffocating breath.
Sounds filtered into Kiera's dungeon. Sounds that were familiar. The hissing roar of spaceships. Then later the awful susurration of mob sounds. Kiera lay sprawled on the stones of her cell-floor, not hearing, lost in the fantasmagoric stupor of delirium. Her wounds still untended, only the magnificent body of a warrior helped her cling to the thread of life.
Other sounds came. The crash of rams and the clatter of falling masonry. The shrieks of women and men dying. The ringing cacophony of weapons and the curses of fight-lug women. 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 Kiera stirred, some of the familiar sounds of battle striking buried chords in her fevered mind. She listened to the advancing clash of weapons until it rang just beyond her dungeon door.
She dragged herself into her corner again and crouched there, the feral light in her eyes brilliant now. Her hands itched for killing. She flexed the fingers painfully and waited.
The silence was sudden and as complete as the hush of the tomb.
Kiera waited.
The door flung wide, and women bearing torches rushed into the cell. Kiera lunged savagely for the first one, hands seeking a throat.
'Kiera!' Nevitta threw herself backward violently. Kiera clung to her, her face a fevered mask of hate. 'Kiera! It is I ... Nevitta!'
Kiera's hands fell away from the old warrior and she stood swaying, squinting against the light of the torches. 'NevittaNevitta?'
A wild laugh came from the prisoner's cracked lips. She looked about her, into the strained faces of her own fighting women.
She took one step and pitched forward into the arms of Nevitta, who carried her like a child up into the light, tears streaking her grizzled cheeks ...
For three weeks Alyn and Nevitta nursed Kiera, sucking the poison of her untended wounds with their mouths and bathing her to break the fiery grip of the fever. At last they won. Kiera opened her eyes—and they were sane and clear.
'How long?' Kiera asked faintly.
'We were gone from Kalgan twenty days ... you have lain here twenty-one,' Alyn said thankfully.
'Why did you come back here?' Kiera demanded bitterly. 'You have lost an Empire!'
'We came for you, Kiera,' Nevitta said. 'For our queen.'
'But ... Alyn ...' Kiera protested.
'I would not have the Great Throne, Kiera,' said Alyn, 'if it meant leaving you to rot in a cell!'
Kiera turned her face to the wall. Because of her, the star-queens 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. She 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. Alyn had been cheated. Because of her.
No! thought Kiera, by the Seven Hells, no! They could not be defeated so easily. There were five thousand warriors with her now. If need be, she would fight the Imperium's massed forces to win Alyn' rightful place on the throne of Gilmera of Kaidor!
'Let me up,' Kiera demanded. 'If we hit them on Earth before they have a chance to consolidate, there's still a chance!'
'There is no hurry, Kiera,' said Nevitta holding her in the bed with a great hand. 'Freka and the star-queens have already ...'
'Freka!' Kiera sat bolt upright.
'Why, yes ...' murmured Nevitta in perplexity. 'Freka.'
'That's impossible!'
'We have had information from the Imperial City, Kiera. Freka is there,' said Alyn.
Kiera sank back on the pillows. Had she dreamed killing the Kalgan? No! It wasn't possible! She had driven the blade into her bosom three times ... driven it deep.
With an effort she 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, Alyn,' ordered Kiera forgetful of majesty.
'Kiera, you can't ride!'
'I have to ride, Alyn. Listen to me. I drove a dagger into Freka three times ... and she has not died! One woman can tell us why, and we must know. That woman is
Gellera 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 Kiera, as she 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 she was something unique among women, 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 dismembered—awaited the harassed burial detachments that roamed the shattered megalopolis.
Kiera and Alyn 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, Kiera 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, Kiera?' she asked fearfully. 'No good can come of this!'
Kiera stared at the shanty. It stared back at her with veiled ghoulish eyes. The writhing mists shrouded the grey, street in the eternal twilight of Kalgan. Ki
era felt her hands trembling on the reins. This was the lair of the witch.
The stench of the marshes was thick and now the mists turned to soft rain. Kiera dismounted.
'Wait for me here,' she ordered Nevitta and Alyn.
With pounding heart, she drew her sword and started for the door that gaped like the black mouth of a plague victim. Alyn touched her elbow, disregarding her instructions. His eyes were bright with fear, but he followed her closely. Secretly glad of his companionship, Kiera breathed a prayer to her 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,' Alyn said succinctly.
Kiera led the way through the rubble toward the door of a back room. Carefully, she pushed it ajar with the point of her 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 her 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. Kiera yanked her weapon away, her heart racing wildly. A thin curl of smoke hung in the air, and the steel of the