blade was pitted. Kiera fought down the urge to run in terror.
'I'm afraid, Kiera!' whispered Alyn, clinging to her. Kiera took his hand and moved cautiously around the pile of broken machinery. She found Gellera then, and tried to stop Alyn from seeing.
'The Great Destroyer she served failed her,' Kiera said slowly....The witch was dead. The mob, terrified—and hating what they could not understand—had killed her cruelly. I she staring eyes mocked Kiera, the blackened tongue lolled stupidly out of the dry lips. Gellera's mystery, thought Kiera, was still safe with her....
On the way out, Kiera 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 she made out the title.
''Perpetually Regenerating Warps and their Application in Interstellar Engines' ....'
The words meant nothing to her. She dropped the magic hook and picked up two others. This time her eyes widened.
'What is it, Kiera?' Alyn asked fearfully.
'Long ago,' Kiera 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 Alyn.
'I wonder,' mused Kiera looking at the books. 'What was this Gellera known best for?'
Alyn shuddered. 'For her homunculi.'
'The ancients, it is said, knew many things. Even bow to make ... artificial servants. Robots, they were called.' She handed his the book. 'Can you read this ancient script?'
Alyn read aloud, his voice unsteady.
''First Principles of Robotics.''
'And this one?'
''Incubation and Gestation of Android? ... !'
Kiera of Valkyr stood in the silent, wrecked laboratory of the dead witch Gellera, her medieval mind trying to break free of the bondage of a millennium of superstition and ignorance. She understood now ... many things.
VI
Like great silver fish leaping up into the bowl of night, the ships of the Valkyr fleet rose from Kalgan. Within the pulsing hulls five thousand warriors rode, ready for battle. Against the mighty forces of the assembled star-queens,
the army of Valkyr counted for almost nothing; but the savage fighting women of the Edge carried with them their talisman—Alyn Imperator, uncrowned sovereign of the Galaxy, Heiress to the Thousand Emperors—the son of their beloved warrior-prince, Gilmera, conqueror of Kaidor.
In the lead vessel, Nevitta dogged the harried Navigators, urging greater speed. Below decks, the war chargers snorted and stomped the steel decks, sensing the tension of the coming clash in the close, smoky air of the spaceships.
Kiera stood beside the forward port with Alyn, looking out into the strangely distorted night of space. As speed increased, the stars vanished and the night that pressed against the flanks of the hurtling ship grew grey and unsteady. Still velocity climbed, and then beyond the great curving glass screen there was nothing. Not blackness, or emptiness. A soul-chilling nothingness that twisted the mind and refused to be accepted by human eyes. Hyper-space.
Kiera drew the draperies closed and the observation lounge of the huge ancient liner grew dim and warm.
'What's ahead, Kiera?' the boy asked with a sigh. 'More fighting and killing?'
The Valkyr shook her head. 'Your Imperium, Your Majesty,' she said formally, 'a crown of stars that a thousand generations have gathered for you. That lies ahead.'
'Oh, Kiera! Can't you forget the Empire for the space of an hour?' Alyn demanded angrily.
The Warlord of Valkyr looked at her Emperor in perplexity. There were times when men were hard to fathom.
'Forget it, I say!' the boy cried, his eyes suddenly flaming.
'If Your Majesty wishes, I'll not speak of it again,' said Kiera stiffly.
Alyn took a step toward her. 'There was a time when you looked at me as a man. When you thought of me as a man! Am I so different now?'
Kiera studied his slim body and sensuously patrician face. 'There was a time when I thought of you as a child, too. Those times pass. You are now my Emperor. your vassal. Command me. I'll fight for you. Die for you, if need be. Anything. But by the Seven Hells, Alyn, don't torture me with favors I can't claim!'
'So I must command then?' He stamped his foot angrily. 'Very well, I command you, Valkyr!'
'Lady, I'll never be a Consort!'
The boy's face flushed. 'Did I ask it? I know I can't make a lapdog out of you, Kiera.'
'Stop it, Alyn,' Kiera muttered heavily.
'Kiera,' he said softly, 'I've loved you since I was a child. I love you now. Does that mean nothing to you?' 'Everything, Alyn.' Lust rose as she felt the tensions in him.
'Then for the space of this voyage, Kiera, forget the Empire. Forget everything except that I love you. Take what I offer you. There is no Emperor here ...'
The silver fleet speared down into the atmosphere of the mother planet. Earth lay beneath them like a globe of azure. The spaceships fanned out into a wedge as they split the thin cold air high above the sprawling megalopolis of the Imperial City.
The capital lay ringed about with the somnolent shapes of the star-queens' great armada. Somewhere down there, Kiera knew, Freka waited. Freka the Unknown. The unkillable? Kiera wondered. For weapons she had her sword and a little knowledge. She prayed it would be enough. It had to be. Five thousand warriors could not defeat the assembled might of the star-queens.
Shunning the spaceport, Kiera led her fleet to a landing on the grassy esplanade that surrounded the city. As the hurried debarkation of women and horses began, Kiera could see a cavalry force massing before the gates to oppose them.. She cursed and urged her women to greater speed. Horses reared and neighed; weapons glinted in the late afternoon sunlight.
Within the hour the debarkation was complete, and Kiera sat armed and mounted before the serried ranks of her warriors. The afternoon was filled with the flash of steel and the blazing glory of gonfalons as she ordered her ranks for battle ... a battle that she hoped with all her heart to avoid.
Across the plain, the Valkyr could make out the pennon of Doorn in the first rank of the advancing defenders. Kiera ordered Nevitta to stay by the Emperor in the rear ranks and to escort his forward with all ceremony if she called for him.
Alyn rode a white charger and had clad himself in the panoply of a Valkyr warrior maid. His hips were girded in a harness of linked steel plates, his long legs free to ride astride. Over his bosom and pectorals was laced a hauberk of chain mail that shimmered in the slanting sunlight. On his head a Valkyr's winged helmet—and from under it his golden hair fell in cascades of light to his shoulders. A silver cloak stood out behind his as he galloped past the ranks of Valkyrs, and they cheered his as he went. Kiera, watching him, thought he resembled the ancient war-god of her own world—imperious, regal.
With a cry, Kiera ordered her riders forward and the glittering ranks swept forward across the esplanade like a turbulent wave, spear-heads agleam, gonfalons fluttering. She rode far ahead, seeking a meeting with old Erica of Doom, her mother's friend.
She signalled, and the two surging masses of warriors slowed as the two star-queens rode to a meeting between the armies. Kiera raised an open right hand in the sign of truce, and old Erica did likewise. Their caparisoned chargers tossed their heads angrily at being restrained and eyed each other with white-rimmed eyes.
Kiera drew rein, facing the old star-queen.
'I greet you,' she said formally.
'Do you come in friendship, or in war?' asked Erica.
'That will depend on the Emperor,' Kiera replied.
The lord of Doom smiled, and there was scorn on her face. She was remembering Kalgan and Kiera's reluctance. 'You will be pleased to know, then, that the Imperial Ivane bids you enter his city in peace—so that you may do his homage and throw yourself on his mercy for your crimes against Kalgan.'
Kiera gave a short,
steely laugh. So Ivane had already learned of the Valkyr sack of Kalgan. 'I do not know any 'Imperial Ivane,' Erica,' she said coldly. 'When I spoke of the Emperor, I meant the true Emperor, Alyn, the son of your lord and mine, Gilmera of Kaidor.' She signalled Alyn and Nevitta forward.
The gonfalons of the Valkyr line dipped in salute as Alyn trotted through the ranks. He drew rein, facing the amazed Erica.
'Noble lady!' she gasped. 'We were told you were dead!'
'And so I might have been, had Ivane had his way!'
The old star-queen stammered in confusion. There was more here than she could understand. Only a week before, she and the other star-queens had done homage to Ivane and hailed his as their savior from the oppressions of the Empress Torana, and the nearest living kin to the late Gilmera. And now...!
Erica frowned. 'If we have been made fools, Freka must answer for this!'
'And now,' asked Kiera grimly, 'do we enter the city in peace or do we cut our way in?'
Erica signalled her women to swing in beside the ranked Valkyrs and the whole mass of armed women moved through the fading afternoon toward the gates of the Imperial City.
It was dusk by the time the cavalcade reached the walls of the Imperial Palace. Kiera called a halt and ordered her women to rest on their arms. Taking only Nevitta and Alyn with her, she joined Erica of Doorn in challenging the
Janizaries of the Palace Guard.
They were passed by the stolid Pleiadenes without comment, for the lord of Doom was known as a vassal of the Imperial Ivane. Faces set, the small party strode up