Classic Audiobook Collection - Black Amazon of Mars by Leigh Brackett ~ Full Audiobook [scifi]

Episode Date: February 15, 2023

Black Amazon of Mars by Leigh Brackett audiobook. Genre: scifi Carrying out the last wishes of a comrade, mercenary Eric John Stark takes on the task of returning a stolen talisman to a walled city near the Martian pole; a city that guards the mysterious Gates of Death. Now all he has to do is get past the brutal clans of Mekh and the shadowy Lord Ciaran to get to Kushat where they’ll probably attempt to kill him. All while he tries to hold on to a talisman that imprints ancient memories of the Gates in his mind. That’s not easy for a human raised by Mercurian aborigines. - Black Amazon of Mars is the third story to feature Brackett’s hero Eric John Stark, and was later expanded into the novel People of the Talisman. It was first published in Planet Stories magazine in March of 1951. For ad-free listening try our premium subscription Chapters (Approximate) (00:00:00) Chapter 1 (00:16:48) Chapter 2 (00:34:31) Chapter 3 (00:51:05) Chapter 4 (01:12:49) Chapter 5 (01:29:44) Chapter 6 (01:51:17) Chapter 7 (02:09:40) Chapter 8 (02:34:50) Chapter 9 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Black Amazon of Mars by Lee Brackett. Chapter 1 Through all the long, cold hours of the Norland night, the Martian had not moved nor spoken. At dusk of the day before, Eric John Stark had brought him into the ruined tower, and laid him down, wrapped in blankets on the snow. He had built a fire of dead brush,

and since then the two men had waited, alone in the vast wasteland that girdles the polar cap of Mars. Now, just before dawn, Kamar the Martian, spoke. Stark. Yes. I am dying. Yes. I will not reach Kushat.

No. Kamar nodded. He was silent again. The wind howled down from the northern ice, and the broken walls rose up against it, brooding, gigantic, roofless, now, but so huge and sprawling that they seemed less like walls than cliffs of ebb and stone. Stark would not have gone near them but for Kamar. They were wrong, somehow, with a taint of forgotten evil still about them.

The big earthman glanced at Kamar, and his face was sad. A man likes to die in his own place. He said abruptly, I am sorry. The Lord of Silence is a great personage, Kamar answered. He does not mind the meeting-place. No, it was not for that that I came back into the Norlands. He was shaken by an agony that was not of the body. And I shall not reach Kushat.

Stark spoke quietly, using the courtly high-house. Martian almost as fluently as Kamar. I have known that there was a burden heavier than death upon my brother's soul. He leaned over, placing a large hand on the Martian's shoulder. My brother has given his life for mine. Therefore I will take his burden upon myself if I can. He did not want Kamar's burden, whatever it might be, but the Martian had fought beside him

through the long guerrilla campaign among the hairy tribes of the nearer moon. He was a good man of his hands, and in the end had taken the bullet that was meant for Stark, knowing quite well what he was doing. They were friends. That is why Stark had brought Kamar

into the bleak north country, trying to reach the city of his birth. The Martian was driven by some secret deal. demon. He was afraid to die before he reached Kushat, and now he had no choice. I have sinned, Stark. I have stolen a holy thing. You, an outlander, you would not know of Bon Cruchak, and the talesman that he left when he went away forever beyond the gates of death. Kamar flung aside the blankets and sat up, his voice gaining a febrile strength. I was born and bred in the thieves' quarter under the wall.

I was proud of my skill, and the talesman was a challenge. It was a treasured thing, so treasured, that hardly a man has touched it since the days of Bonn Khrushak, who made it. And that was in the days when men still had the luster on them, before they forgot that they were gods. Guard well the gates of death, he said, That is the city's trust. And keep the talesman always, For the day may come when you will need its strength.

Who holds Cushat, holds Mars? And the talesman will keep the city safe. I was a thief and proud, and I stole the taelsman. His hands went to his girdle, a belt of worn leather with a boss of battered steel, but his fingers were already numb. Take it, Stark. Open the boss, there, on the side, where the beast's head is carved. Stark took the belt from Kamar and found the hidden spring.

The rounded top of the boss came free. Inside it was something wrapped in a scrap of silk. I had to leave, Cushat. Kamar whispered, I could never go back, but it was enough to have taken that. He watched shaken between awe and pride and remorse, as Stark unwrapped the bit of silk. Stark had discounted most of Kamar's.

talk as superstition, but even so he had expected something more spectacular than the object he held in his palm. It was a lens, some four inches across, man-made and made with great skill, but still only a bit of crystal. Turning it about, Stark saw that it was not a simple lens, but an intricate interlocking of many facets. Incredibly complicated. hypnotic if one looked at it too long.

What is its use? He asked Kamar. We are as children. We have forgotten. But there is a legend, a belief, that Bon Cruchak himself made the talesman as a sign that he would not forget us and would come back when Khrushat is threatened. Back through the gates of death. to teach us again the power that was his. I do not understand, said Stark.

What are the gates of death? Kamar answered. It is a pass that opens into the black mountains beyond Kushat. The city stands guard before it. Why, no man remembers except that it is a great trust. His gaze feasted on the talesman. Stark said, You wish me to take this to Kushat?

Yes, yes, and yet. Kamar looked at Stark, his eyes filling suddenly with tears. No, the North is not used to strangers. With me, you might have been safe. But alone, no, Stark. You have risked too much already. Go back out of the Norlands while you can. He lay back on the blankets.

Stark saw that a bluish pallor had come into the hollows of his cheeks. Camar, he said, and again, Camar, yes. Go in peace, Camar. I will take the talesman to Cushat. The Martian sighed and smiled, and Stark was glad that he had made the promise. The riders of Meck are wolves, said Camar suddenly. They hunt these gorgeous. Look out for them. I will. Stark's knowledge of the geography of this part

of Mars was vague indeed, but he knew that the mountain valleys of Meck lay ahead and to the north between him and Kushat. Kamar had told him of these upland warriors. He was willing to heed the warning. Kamar had done with talking. Stark knew that he had not long to wait. The wind spoke with the voice of a great organ. The moons had set, and it was very dark outside the tower, except for the white glimmering of the snow. Stark looked up at the brooding walls and shivered. There was a smell of death already in the air. To keep from thinking, he bent closer to the fire, studying the lens. There were scratches on the bezel, as though it had been held some time to a clamp or setting like a jewel.

An ornament, probably, worn as a badge of rank. Strange ornament for a barbarian king in the dawn of Mars. The firelight made tiny dancing sparks in the endless inner facets. Quite suddenly, he had a curious feeling that the thing was alive. A pang of primitive and unreasoning fear shot through him, and he fought it down. His vision was beginning to blur, and he shut his eyes. And in the darkness, it seemed to him that he could see and hear.

He started up, shaken now, with an eerie terror, and raised his hand to hurl the talesman away, but the part of him that had learned with much pain and effort to be civilized made him stop and think. He sat down again, an instrument of hypnosis, possibly, and yet that fleeting touch of sight and sound had not been his own out of his own memories. He was tempted now, fascinated, like a child that plays with fire. The talesman had been warned somehow,

where, on the breast, on the brow, he tried the first with no result. Then he touched the flat surface of the lens to his forehead. The great tower of stone rose up monstrous to the sky. It was whole, and there were pallid lights within that stirred and flickered, and it was crowned with a shimmering darkness. He lay outside the tower on his belly, and he was filled with fear and a great anger, and a loathing such as turns the bones to water.

There was no snow. There was ice everywhere, rising to half the tower's height, sheathing the ground. Ice, cold and clear and beautiful and deadly. He moved. He collided snake-like, with infinite caution over the smooth surface. The tower was gone, and far below he. him was a city. He saw the temples and the palaces, the glittering lovely city beneath him in the ice, blurred and fairy-like and strange, a dream half-glimpsed through crystal.

He saw the ones that lived there, moving slowly through the streets. He could not see them clearly, only the vague shining of their bodies, and he was glad. He hated them. with the hatred that conquered even his fear, which was great indeed. He was not John Eric Stark. He was Bon Cruchak. The tower and the city vanished, swept away on a reeling tide. He stood beneath a scarf of black rock, notched with a single pass. The cliffs hung over him, leaning out their vast bulk as though to crush him.

and the narrow mouth of the pass was full of evil laughter where the wind went by. He began to walk forward into the pass. He was quite alone. The light was dim and strange at the bottom of that cleft. Little veins of mist crept and clung between the ice and the rock, thickened, became more dense as he went farther and farther into the pass. He could not see, and the wind, spoke with many tongues, piping in the crevices of the cliffs.

All at once there was a shadow in the mist before him, a dim, gigantic shape that moved toward him, and he knew that he looked at death. He cried out. It was stark who yelled in blind, atavistic fear, and the echo of his own cry brought him up standing, shaking in every limb. He had dropped the tail of his tail.

It lay gleaming in the snow at his feet, and the alien memories were gone, and Kamar was dead. After a time he crouched down, breathing harshly, he did not want to touch the lens again. The part of him that had learned to fear strange gods and evil spirits with every step he took, the primitive Aboriginal that lay so close under the surface of his mind, warned him to leave it, to run away, to desert this place of death and ruined stone. He forced himself to take it up. He did not look at it. He wrapped it in the bit of silk and replaced it inside the iron boss

and clasped the belt around his waist. Then he found the small flask that lay with his gear beside the fire and took a long pull and tried to think rationally. of the thing that had happened. Memories. Not his own, but the memories of Bonn Khrushak a million years ago

in the morning of a world. Memories of hate, a secret war against unhuman beings that dwelt in crystal caves cut in the living ice, and used these ruined towers for some dark purpose of their own. Was that the meaning of the talesman,

the power that lay within it, had Bonn Crucchak, by some elder and forgotten science, imprisoned the echoes of his own mind in the crystal? Why? Perhaps, as a warning, as a reminder of ageless alien danger beyond the gates of death? Suddenly, one of the beasts tethered outside the ruined tower started up from its sleep with a hissing snarl. Instantly Stark became motionless.

They came silently on their padded feet, the rangy mountain brutes moving daintily through the sprawling ruin. Their riders, too, were silent, tall men with fierce eyes and russet hair, wearing leather coats and carrying each a long, straight spear. There were a score of them around the tower in the windy gloom. Stark did not bother to draw his gun. He had learned very young the difference between courage and idiocy. He walked out toward them slowly, lest one of them be startled into spearing him, yet not slowly enough to denote fear, and he held up his right hand and gave them greeting. They did not answer him.

They sat their restive mounts and stared at him, and Stark knew that Kamar had spoken the truth. These were the writers of Mech. They were wolves. End of Chapter 1. Chapter 2 of Black Amazon of Mars by Lee Brackett. This Libravox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 2 Stark waited until they should tire of their own silence.

Finally one demanded, Of what country are you? He answered, I am called. called Nchaka, the man without a tribe. It was the name they had given him, the half-human Aboriginals who had raised him in the blaze and thunder and bitter frosts of Mercury. A stranger, said the leader, and smiled. He pointed at the dead Kamar and asked, Did you slay him? He was my friend, said Stark. I was bringing him home to die.

Two riders dismounted to inspect the body. One called up to the leader. He was from Cushat if I know the breed, Thorne, and he has not been robbed. He proceeded to take care of that detail himself. A stranger, repeated the leader, Thorne. Bound for Cushat with a man of Cushat. Well, I think you will come with us, stranger. Stark shrugged.

And with the long spears, him, he did not resist when the tall Thorne plundered him of all he owned except his clothes and Kamar's belt, which was not worth the stealing. His gun, Thord flung contemptuously away. One of the men brought Stark's beast and Kamars from where they were tethered, and the earthman mounted, as usual over the violent protest of the creature, which did not like the smell of him. They moved out from under the shelter of the walls into the full fury of the wind. For the rest of that night and through the next day, and the night that followed it,

they rode eastward, stopping only to rest the beasts and chew on their rations of jerked meat. To Stark, riding a prisoner, it came with full force that this was the North Country, half a world away from the Mars of spaceships and commerce and visitors from other planets. The future had never touched these wild mountains and barren plains. The past held pride enough. To the north, the horizon showed a strange and ghostly glimmer where the barrier wall of the polar pack reared up gigantic against the sky. The wind blew down from the ice through the mountain gorges,

across the plains, never ceasing. And here and there the cryptic towers rose, Broken monoliths of stone, Stark remembered the vision of the talesman, the huge structure crowned with eerie darkness. He looked upon the ruins with loathing and curiosity. The men of Meck could tell him nothing. Thorne did not tell Stark where they were taking him,

and Stark did not ask. It would have been an admission of fear. In the mid-afternoon of the second day, they came to a lip of rock, where the snow was swept clean, and below it was a sheer drop into a narrow valley. Looking down, Stark saw that on the floor of the valley, up and down as far as he could see, were men and beasts and shelters of hide and brush and fires burning. By the hundreds, by the several thousand, they camped under the cliffs,

and their voices rose up on the thin air in a vast, deep murmur that was deafening after the silence of the plains. A war party gathered now before the thaw. Stark smiled. He became curious to meet the leader of this army. They found their way single file along a winding track that dropped down the cliff face. The wind stopped abruptly, cut off by the valley walls. They came in among the shelters of the camp.

Here the snow was churned and soiled and milky. to slush by the fires. There were no women in the camp, no sign of the usual, cheerful rabble that follows a barbarian army. There were only men, hillmen, and warriors all, tough-handed killers with no thought but battle. They came out of their holes to shout at Thorpe and his men

and stare at the stranger. Thard was flushed and jovial with importance. "'I have no time for you,' he shouted back. I go to speak with the Lord Kiaren." Stark rode impassively, a dark giant with a face of stone. From time to time he made his beast curvet, and laughed at himself inwardly for doing it. They came at length to a shelter larger than the others,

but built exactly the same and no more comfortable. A spear was thrust into the snow beside the entrance, and from it hung a black pennant, with a single bar of silver across it, like lightning in a night sky. Beside it was a shield with the same device. There were no guards. Thord dismounted, bidding Stark to do the same. He hammered on the shield with the hilt of his sword, announcing himself.

Lord Kiaran, it is Thorne with a captive. A voice, toneless and strangely muffled, spoke from within. Enter, Tharred. Tharred pushed aside the hide curtain and went in, with Stark at his heels. The dim daylight did not penetrate the interior. Crescent's burned, giving off a flickering brilliance and a smell of strong oil. The floor of packed snow was carpeted with furs, much worn. Otherwise there was no adornment, and no furniture but a chair and a table,

both dark with age and use, and a palette of skins in one shadowy corner with what seemed to be a heap of rags upon it. In the chair sat a man. He seemed very tall in the shaking light of the crescents. From neck to thigh his lean body was cased in black link-male, and under that a tunic of leather dyed black. Across his knees he held a sable, axe, a great thing made for the shearing of skulls, and his hands lay upon it gently as though it were a toy he loved. His head and face were covered by a thing that Stark had seen before only in very old paintings. The ancient war-mask of the inland kings of Mars, wrought of black and gleaming steel,

it presented an unhuman visage of slitted eye-holes and abhorred slot. for breathing. Behind, it sprang out in a thin, soaring sweep, like a dark wing edge-on inflate. The intent, expressionless scrutiny of that mask was bent, not upon Thard, but upon Eric John Stark. The hollow voice spoke again from behind the mask. Well—we were hunting in the gorges to the south, said Thorpe, we saw fire. He told the story. of how they had found the stranger and the body of the man from Cushat. "'Cushat!' said Lord Kiaran softly. "'Ah, and why, stranger, were you going to Cushat?'

"'My name is Stark, Eric, John Stark, Earthman, out of Mercury. He was tired of being called stranger. Quite suddenly he was tired of the whole business. Why should I not go to Cushat? Is it against some law that a man may not go there in peace without being hounded all over the Norlands? And why do the men of Mech make it their business? They have nothing to do with the city? Thorne held his breath, watching with delighted anticipation.

The hands of the man in armor caressed the axe. They were slender hands, smooth and sinewy, small hands, it seemed, for such a weapon. we make what we will our business eric john stark he spoke with peculiar gentleness i have asked you why were you going to kushat because stark answered with equal restraint my comrade wanted to go home to die it seems a long hard journey just for dying the black helm bent forward in an attitude of thought Only the condemned or banished leave their cities or their clans. Why did your comrade flee Cushat? A voice spoke suddenly from out of a heap of rags that lay on the pellet in the shadows of the corner. A man's voice, deep and husky, with the harsh quaver of age or madness in it,

Three men beside myself have fled Cushat over the years that matter. One died in the spring floods. One was caught in the moving ice of winter. One lived. A thief called Kamar, who stole a certain talesman. Stark said, My comrade was called Greshie. The leather belt weighed heavy about him,

and the iron boss seemed hot against his belly. He was beginning now to be afraid. The Lord Kiaran spoke, ignoring Stark. It was the last. the sacred talesman of Cushat. Without it, the city is like a man without a soul. As the veil of Tannet was to Carthage, Stork thought, and reflected on the fate of that city after the veil was stolen. The nobles were afraid of their own people, the man in armor said. They did not dare to tell that it was gone, but we know. And, said Stark, you will attack Cushat,

kushat before the thaw when they least expect you you have a sharp mind stranger yes but the great wall will be hard to carry even so if i came bearing in my hands the talesman of bon khrushat he did not finish but turned instead to thord when you plundered the dead man's body what did you find nothing lord a few coins a knife hardly worth the taking And you, Eric John Stark? What did you take from the body? With perfect truth, he answered, nothing. Thard, said the Lord Kiaran, search him. Tharad came, smiling up to Stark and ripped his jacket open. With uncanny swiftness the earthman moved. The edge of one broad hand took Thar'd under the ear,

and before the man's knees had time to sag, Stark had caught his arm. He turned, crouching forward, and pitched Thorpeard headlong through the door-flap. He straightened and turned again. His eyes held a feral glean. The man has robbed me once, he said. It is enough. He heard Thorad's men coming.

Three of them tried to jam through the entrance at once, and he sprang at them. He made no sound. His fists did the talking for him, and then his feet. as he kicked the stunned barbarians back upon their leader. Now, he said to Lord Kiaran, We will talk as men. The man in armor laughed, a sound of pure enjoyment.

It seemed that the gaze behind the mask studied Stark's savage face and then lifted to greet the sullen thord who came back into the shelter, his cheeks flushed crimson with rage. Go, said the Lord Kierran. Kieran. The stranger and I will talk. But, Lord, he protested, glaring at Stark, it is not safe. My dark mistress looks after my safety, said Kiaran, stroking the axe across

his knees. Go. Thard went. The man in armor was silent, then. The blind mask turned to Stark, who met that eyeless gazed and was silent also. And the bundle of rags in the the shadows straightened slowly and became a tall old man with rusty hair and beard, through which peered craggy juts of bone and two bright small points of fire, as though some wicked flame burned within him. He shuffled over and crouched at the feet of the Lord Kiarin, watching the earthman, and the man in armor leaned forward. I will tell you something, Eric John Stark. I am a bastard, but I come of the blood of kings.

My name and rank I must make with my own hands, but I will set them high, and my name will ring in the Norlands. I will take Cushat, who holds Cushat, holds Mars, and the power and the riches that lie beyond the gates of death. I have seen them, said the old man, and its eyes blazed. I have seen Bon Cruciaka the mighty. I have seen the temples and the palaces glitter in the ice. I have seen them, the shining ones.

Oh, I have seen them the beautiful, hideous ones. He glanced sidelong at Stark, very cunning. That is why Otar is mad, stranger. he has seen. A chill-swept, Stark. He too had seen, not with his own eyes, but with the mind and memories of Bon Cruciak of a million years ago. Then it had been no illusion.

The fantastic vision opened to him by the talesman now hidden in his belt if this old madman had seen. What beings lurk beyond the gates of death I do not know, said Siaaron. But my dark mistress will test their strength, and I think my red wolves will hunt them down once they get a smell of plunder. The beautiful, terrible ones, whispered O-Tar. And, oh, the temples and the palaces and the great towers of stone! Ride with me, Stark, said the lorry.

Kieran abruptly. Yield up the talesman and be the shield at my back. I have offered no other man that honor. Stark asked slowly, why do you choose me? We are of one blood, Stark, though we be strangers. The earthman's cold eyes narrowed. What would your red wolves say to that? And what would O-Tar say?

Look at him, already stiff with jealousy. and fear lest I answer yes. I do not think you would be afraid of either of them. On the contrary, said Stark, I am a prudent man. He paused. There is one other thing. I will bargain with no man until I have looked into his eyes. Take off your helm, Kiaran, and then perhaps we will talk.

Otar's breath made a snake-like hissing between his eyes. his toothless gums, and the hands of the Lord Kiaran tightened on the haft of the axe. No, he whispered, that I can never do. O-Tar rose to his feet, and for the first time, Stark felt the full strength that lay in this strange old man. Would you look upon the face of destruction? He thundered. Do you ask for death?

Do you think a thing is hidden behind a mask of storkman? deal without a reason that you demand to see it? He turned, My lord, he said, By tomorrow the last of the clans will have joined us. After that, we must march. Give this earth-man to thawed for the time that remains, and you will have the talesman.

The blank, blind mask was unmoving, turned toward Stark, and the earthman thought that from behind it came a faint sound that might have been, a sigh. Then, Thar'd, cried the Lord Kiaran, and lifted up the axe. End of Chapter 2. Chapter 3 of Black Amazon of Mars by Lee Brackett.

This Lieberbox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 3 The flames leaped high from the fire in the windlass gorge. men sat around it in a great circle, the wild riders out of the mountain valleys of Meck. They sat with the curbed and shivering eagerness of wolves around a dying quarry. Now and again their white teeth showed in a kind of silent laughter, and their eyes watched. He is strong, they whispered one to the other. He will live the night out, surely.

On an outcrop of rock sat the Lord Kea. wrapped in a black cloak, holding the great axe in the crook of his arm. Beside him, O-Tar huddled in the snow. Close by, the long spears had been driven deep and lashed together to make a scaffolding, and upon this frame was hung a man, a big man, iron muscled and very lean, the bulk of his shoulders filling the space between the bending shafts. eric john stark of earth out of mercury he had been scourged without mercy he sagged of his own weight between the spears breathing in harsh sobs and the trampled snow around him was spotted red Thord was wielding the lash.

He had stripped off his own coat, and his body glistened with sweat in spite of the cold. He cut his victim with great care, making the long lash sing and crack. He was proud of his skill. Stark did not cry out. Presently Thorpelled stepped back, panting, and looked at the Lord Kiaran and the black helm nodded.

Thord dropped the whip. He went up to the big dark, man and lifted his head by the hair. Stark, he said, and shook the head roughly. Stranger! Eyes opened and stared at him, and Thorne could not repress a slight shiver. It seemed that the pain and indignity had wrought some evil magic on this man he had ridden with and thought he knew.

He had seen exactly the same gaze in a big snow cat caught in a trap, and he felt suddenly that it was not a man he spoke to, but a predatory beast. Stark, he said, Where is the talesman of Bon Cruciak? The Earthman did not answer. Thornd laughed. He glanced up at the sky where the moons rode low and swift. The night is only half done.

Do you think you can last it out? The cold, cruel, patient eyes watched Thorne, there was no reply. Some quality of pride in that gaze angered the barbarian. It seemed to mock him who was so sure of his ability to loosen a reluctant tongue. You think I cannot make you talk, don't you? You don't know me, stranger. You don't know Tharred, who can make the rocks speak out if he will.

He reached out with his free hand and struck slowly. stark across the face. It seemed impossible that anything so still could move so quickly. There was an ugly flash of teeth, and Thorad's wrist was caught above the thumb joint. He bellowed, and the iron jaws closed down, worrying the bone. Quite suddenly, Thorpe screamed, not for pain, but for panic, and the rows of watching men swayed forward, and even the large, Kieran rose up, startled.

Hark! Ran the whispering around the fire. Hark how he growls! Thark had let go of Stark's hair and was beating him about the head with his clenched fist. His face was white. Whirlwolf! he screamed. Let me go, beast thing, let me go! But the dark man clung to Thard's wrist snarling and did not hear.

After a bit, there came the dull. crack of bone. Stark opened his jaws. Thorpezed to strike him. He backed off slowly, staring at the torn flesh. Stark had sunk down to the length of his arms. With his left hand, Thorpe drew his knife. The Lord Kiarin stepped forward.

Wait, Thorne. It is a thing of evil, whispered the barbarian. Warlock, werewolf, beast. He sprang at Stark. The man in orange. The former moved very swiftly, and the great axe went whirling through the air. It caught thawed squarely, where the cords of his neck ran into the shoulder, caught and shore on through.

There was silence in the valley. The Lord Kiaran walked slowly across the trampled snow and took up his axe again. "'I will be obeyed,' he said. "'And I will not stand for fear, not of God, man, nor de' devil. He gestured toward Stark, cut him down, and see that he does not die. He strode away and O-Tar began to laugh. From a vast distance, Stark heard that shrill, wild laughter. His mouth was full of blood, and he was mad with a cold fury. A cunning that was purely animal guided his movements then. His head fell forward and his body hung inner.

against the thongs. He might almost have been dead. A knot of men came toward him. He listened to them. They were hesitant and afraid. Then, as he did not move, they plucked up courage and came closer, and one prodded him gently

with the point of his spear. Brick him well, said another. Let us be sure. The sharp point bit a little deeper. A few drops of blood welled out and joined the small red streams that ran from the wheels of the lash. Stark did not stir. The spearmen grunted,

He is safe enough now. Stark felt the knife blades working at the thongs. He waited. The rawhide snapped, and he was free. He did not fall. He would not have fallen then if he had taken a death wound. He gathered his legs under him and sprang. He picked up the spearmen in that first rush and flung him into the fire.

Then he began to run toward the place where the scaly monks were herded, leaving a trail of blood behind him on the snow. A man loomed up in front of him. He saw the shadow of a spear and swerved and caught the haft in his two hands. He wrenched it free and struck down with the butt of it and went on. Behind him he heard voices shouting at the beginning of turmoil. The Lord Kiaran turned and came back striding fast. There were men before Stark now, many men, the circle of watchers breaking up because there had

been nothing more to watch. He gripped the long spear. It was a good weapon, better than the flint-tipped stick with which the boy in Chaka had hunted the great lizard of the rocks. His body curved into a half-crow. He voiced one cry, the challenging scream of a predatory creature. killer, and went in among the men. He did slaughter with that spear. They were not expecting attack. They were not expecting anything. Stark had sprung to life too quickly, and they were

afraid of him. He could smell the fear on them, fear not of a man like themselves, but of a creature less and more than a man. He killed and was happy. They fell away from him. They fell away from him, the wild riders of Meck, they were sure now that he was a demon. He raged among them with a bright spear, and they heard again that sound that should not have come from a human throat, and their superstitious terror rose and sent them scrambling out of his path, trampling on each other in childish panic. He broke through, and now there was nothing between him and escape, but two mounted men who guarded the herd. Being mounted, they had more courage.

They felt that even a warlock could not stand against their charge. They came at him as he ran, the padded feet of their beasts, making a muffled drumming in the snow. Without breaking stride, Stark hurled his spear. It drove through one man's body and tumbled him off so that he fell under his comrades' mount and fouled its legs. staggered and reared up hissing, and Stark fled on. Once he glanced over his shoulder.

Through the milling, shouting crowd of men, he glimpsed a dark mailed figure with a winged mask, going through the ruck with a loping stride and bearing a sable axe, raised high for the throwing. Stark was close to the herd now, and they caught his scent. The Norland brutes had never liked the smell of him, and now the reek of blood upon him was enough in itself to set them wild. They began to hiss and snarl uneasily,

rubbing their reptilian flanks together as they wheeled around, staring at him with lambent eyes. He rushed them before they could quite decide to break. He was quick enough to catch one by the fleshy comb that served it for a forelock, held it with savage indifference to its squealing, and leaped to its back. Then he let it bolt,

and as he wrote it he yelled a shrill, brute cry that urged the creatures on to panic. The herd broke, stampeding outward from its center like a bursting shell. Stark was in the forefront. Clanging low to the scaly neck,

he saw the men of mech scattered and churned and trampled into the snow by the flying pads. In and out of the scelter, kicking the brush walls down, lifting up their harsh reptilian voices. They went racketing through the camp, leaving behind them wreckage as of a storm, and Stark went with them. He snatched a cloak from off the shoulders of some petty chieftain as he went by,

and then, twisting cruelly on the fleshy comb, beating with his fist at the creature's head, he got his mount turned in the way he wanted it to go, down the valley. He caught one last glimpse of the Lord Kiarin, fighting to hold one of the creatures long enough to mount, and then a dozen striving bodies surged around him, and Stark was gone. The beast did not slack in pace. It was as though it thought it could outrun the alien bloody thing that clung to its back. The last fringes of the camp shot by and vanished in the gloom, and the clean snow of the lower valley lay open before it.

The creature laid its belly to the ground and went, the white spray spurting from its heels. Stark hung on. His strength was gone now, run out suddenly with the battle madness. He became conscious now that he was sick and bleeding, that his body was one cruel pain. In that moment, more than in the hours that had gone before, he hated the black leader of the clans of Meck.

That flight down the valley became a sort of ugly dream. Stark was aware of rock walls reeling past, and then they seemed to widen away in the wind came out of nowhere, like the stroke of a great hammer, and he was on the open moors again. The beast began to falter and slow down. Presently it stopped. Stark scooped up snow,

to rub on his wounds. He came near to fainting, but the bleeding stopped, and after that the pain was numbed to a dull ache. He wrapped the cloak around him and urged the beast to go on, gently this time, patiently, and after it had breathed, it obeyed him, settling into the shuffling pace it could keep up for hours. He was three days on the moors.

Part of the time he rode in a sort of stupor, and part of the time he was feverishly alert, watching the skyline. Frequently he took the shapes of thrusting rocks for riders and found what cover he could until he was sure they did not move. He was afraid to dismount for the beast had no bridle. When it halted to rest, he remained upon its back, shaking. His brow beat it with sweat. The wind scoured his tracks clean as soon as he made them.

Twice in the distance he did see riders, and one of those times he burrowed into a tall drift and stayed there for several hours. The ruined towers marched with him across the bitter land, lonely giants fifty miles apart. He did not go near them. He knew that he wondered a good bit, but he could not help it, and it was probably his salvation.

In those tortured bad lands, riven by ages of frost and flood, one might follow a man on a straight track between two points. But to find a single rider lost in that wilderness was a matter of sheer luck, and the odds were with stark. One evening at sunset he came out upon a plain that sloped upward to a black and towering scarf notched with a single pass. The light was level and blood-red, glittering on the frosty rock so that it seemed the throat of the pass was aflame with evil fires. To Stark's mind, essentially primitive and stripped now of all its acquired reason, that narrow cleft appeared as the doorway to the dwelling place of demons

as horrible as the fabled creatures that roamed the dark side of his native world. He looked long at the gates of death, and a dark memory crept into his brain, memory of that nightmare experience when the talesman had made him seem to walk into that frightful pass, not as Stark, but as Bon Cruchak. He remembered Otar's words, I have seen Bon Cruchak the mighty. Was he still there beyond those darkling gates, fighting his unimagined war alone? Again, in memory, Stark heard the evil,

of the wind. Again the shadow of a dim and terrible shape loomed up before him. He forced the remembrance of that vision from his mind by a great effort. He could not turn back now. There was no place to go. His weary beast plotted on, and now Stark saw as in a dream that a great wall city stood guard before that awful gate. He watched the city glide toward him through the crimson haze, and fancied he could see the ages clustered like birds around the towers. He had reached Kushat, with the talesman of Bon Kushock still strapped in the blood-stained belt around his waist. End of Chapter 3.

Chapter 4 of Black Amazon of Mars by Lee Brackett. This Libravox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 4 He stood in a large square lined about with huckster stalls and the booths of wine-cellars. Beyond were buildings, streets, a city. Stark got a blurred impression of a grand and brooding darkness, bulking huge against the mountains, as bleak and proud as they, and quite as ancient, with many ruins and deserted quarters.

He was not sure how he had come there, but he was standing on his own feet, and someone was pouring sour wine into his mouth. He drank it greedily. There were people around him jostling, chattering, demanding answers to their questions. A girl's voice said sharply, Let him be, can't you see he's hurt? Stark looked down. She was slim and ragged, with black hair and large eyes, yellow as a cat's.

She held a leather bottle in her hands. She smiled at him and said, "'I'm Thannis. Will you drink more wine?' "'I will,' said Stark, and did, and then said, "'Thank you, Thennis.' He put his hand on her shoulder to steady himself. It was a supple shoulder, surprisingly strong. He liked the feel of it.

The crowd was still churning around him, growing larger, and now he heard the tramp of military feet. A small detachment of men in light armor pushed their way through. A very young officer, whose breastplate hurt the eye with brightness, demanded to be told at once who Stark was and why he had come there. No one crosses the moors in winter. He said as though that in itself were a sign of evil intent. The clans of Meck are crossing them, Stark answered.

An army, to take Hushat. One, two days behind me. The crowd picked that up. Excited voices tossed it back and forth and clamored for more news. Stark spoke to the officer. I will see your captain, and at once. You'll see the inside of a prison more likely, snapped the young man. What's this nonsense about the clans of meck?

Stark regarded him. He looked so long and so curiously that the crowd began to snicker and the officer's beardless face flushed pink to the ears. I have fought in many wars, said Stark gently. And long ago I learned to listen when someone came to warn me of attack. Better take him to the Captain Lou, cried Venice. It's our skins, too, you know, if there is war. The crowd began to shout.

They were all poor folk, wrapped in threadbare cloaks or tattered leather. They had no love for the guards. and whether there was war or not their winter had been long and dull and they were going to make the most of this excitement take him lug let him warn the nobles let them think how they'll defend kushat and the gates of death now that the tail-sman is gone that is a lie lug shouted and you know the penalty for telling it hold your tongues or i'll have you all whipped he gestured angrily at stark see if he is armed one of the soul The soldiers stepped forward, but Stark was quicker. He slipped the thong and let the cloak fall, bearing his upper body. The Klansmen had already taken everything I owned, he said, but they gave me something in return.

The crowd stared at the half-heeled stripes that scarred him, and there was a drawing in of breath. The soldier picked up the cloak and laid it over the earthman's shoulders, and Lou said sullenly, "'Come, then.' Stark's fingers tightened on Thanos's shoulder. "'Come with me, little one,' he whispered. "'Otherwise I must crawl.'

She smiled at him and came. The crowd followed. The captain of the guards was a fleshy man with a smell of wine about him, and a face already crumbling apart, though his hair was not yet gray. He sat in a squat tower above the square, and he observed Stark with no particular interest.

"'You had something to tell,' said Luke. "'Tell it.' Stark told him, leaving out all mention of Kamar and the Talesman, "'This was neither the time nor the man to hear that story. The captain listened to all he had to say about the gathering of the clans of Meck, and then sat studying him with a bleary shrewdness. "'You have proof of all this?' "'The stripes.

Their leader, Kiarin, ordered them late on him. himself. The captain sighed and leaned back. "'Any wondering band of hunters could have scourged you,' he said. A nameless vagabond from the gods nowhere, and a lawless one at that if I'm any judge of men, you probably deserved it.' He reached for wine and smiled. "'Look at you, stranger. In the Norlands, no one makes war in the winter, no one ever heard of Kiarin.

if you hope for a reward from the city, you overshot badly. The Lord Kiaran, said Stark grimly, controlling his anger, will be battering at your gates within two days, and you will hear of him then. Perhaps you can wait for him in a cell, and you can leave Kushat with the first caravan after the thaw. We have enough rabble here without taking in more. Phanis caught Stark by the cloak and held him back. "'Sir,' she said as though it were an unclean word,

"'I will vouch for the stranger.' The captain glanced at her. "'You?' "'Sir, I am a free citizen of Cushat. According to law, I may vouch for him.' "'If you scum of the thieves' quarter would practice the law as well as you prate it, we would have less trouble,' growled the captain. very well. Take the creature if you want him. I don't suppose you've anything to lose.

Lug laughed. Name and dwelling-place, said the captain, and wrote them down. Remember he is not to leave the quarter. Fennis nodded. Come, she said to Stork. He did not move, and she looked up at him. He was staring at the captain. His beard had grown in these last days, and his face was still scarred by thard's blows and made wolfish with pain and fever, and now out of this evil mask, his eyes were peering with a chill and terrible intensity at the soft-bellied man who sat and mocked him. Dennis laid her hand on his rough cheek.

Come, she said, come and rest. Gently she turned his head. He blinked and swayed, and she took him around the waist and led him unprotesting to the door. There she paused, looking back. Sir, she said very meekly, news of this attack is being shouted through the quarter now. If it should come, and if it were known that you had the warning and did not pass it on, she made an expressive gesture and went out. Lug glanced uneasily at the captain.

She's right, sir, if by chance the man did tell the truth, the captain swore. rot, a roguer's tail. And yet, he scowled indecisibly and then reached for parchment. After all, it's a simple thing. Write it up, pass it on, and let the nobles do the worrying. His pen began to scratch. Venice took Stark by steep and narrow ways, darkling now in the afterglow, where the city climbed and fell again over the uneven rock.

Stark was aware of the heavy smells of sea. spices and unfamiliar foods, and the musky undertones of a million generations swarmed together to spawn and die in these crowded catacombs of slate and stone. There was a house blending into other houses, close under the loom of the great wall. There was a flight of steps, hollowed deep with use, twisting crazily around outer corners. There was a low room and a slender man named Balin. vaguely glimpsed, who said he was Thanas' brother. There was a bed of skins and woven cloths.

Stark slept. Hands and voices called him back. Strong hands, shaking him, urgent voices. He started up, growling like an animal suddenly awakened, still lost in the dark mists of exhaustion. Balin swore and caught his fingers away. "'What is this thing you've brought home, Venice?' By the gods, it snapped at me.

Thanos ignored him. Stark, she said, Stark, listen. Men are coming. Soldiers. They will question you. Do you hear me? Stark said heavily. I hear.

Do not speak of Kamar. Stark got to his feet, and Balin said hastily, Peace, the thing is safe. I would not steal a death warrant. His voice had a ring of truth. Stark sat down again. It was an effort to keep awake. There was clamor in the street below.

It was still night. Ballin said carefully. Tell them what you told the captain. Nothing more. They will kill you if they know. A rough hand thundered at the door and a voice cried, Open up. Balin sauntered over to lift the bar.

Fonis sat beside Stark, her hand touching his. Stark rubbed his face. He had been shaved and washed. His wounds rubbed with salve. The belt was gone and his blood-stained clothing. He realized, only then, that he was naked, and drew a cloth around him. Thanos whispered, The belt is there on that peg under your cloak.

Balin opened the door, and the room was full of men. Stark recognized the captain. There were others, four of them young, old, intermediate. idiot, annoyed at being hauled away from their beds and their gaming tables at this hour. The sixth man wore the jeweled cuirass of a noble. He had a nice, a kind face. Gray hair, mild eyes, soft cheeks, a fine man but ludicrous in the trappings of a soldier. "'Is this the man?' he asked, and the captain nodded.

"'Yes,' it was his turn to say, sir.' Ballin brought a chair. He had a fine flourish about him. He wore a crimson jeweled in his left ear, and every line of him was quick and sensitive, instinct with mockery. His eyes were brightly cynical in a face-worn lean with years of merry sinning.

Stark liked him. He was a civilized man. They all were. The noble, the captain, the lot of them. So civilized that the origins of their co-consumers of their culture were forgotten half an age before the first clay brick was laid in Babylon. Too civilized, Stark thought. Peace had drawn their fangs and cut their claws. He thought of the wild clansmen coming fast across the snow, and felt a certain pity for the men of Kushat.

The noble sat down. This is a strange tale you bring, Wanderer. I would hear it from your own lips. Stark told it. He spoke slowly watching every word, cursing the weariness that fogged his brain. The noble, who was called Rogaine, asked him questions. Where was the camp? How many men? What were the exact words of the Lord Kiaren and who was he? Stark answered with meticulous care.

Rogaine sat for some time, lost in thought. He seemed worried and upset, one hand playing eight. aimlessly with the hilt of his sword, a scholar's hand, without a callous on it. "'There is one more thing,' said Rogaine. "'What business had you on the Moors in winter?' Stark smiled. "'I am a wonderer by profession.' "'Outlaw?' asked the captain, and Stark shrugged. "'Mercenary is a kinder word.'

Rogaine studied the patterns of stripes on the Earthman's dark skin. Why did the Lord Kiaren so called, order you scourged? I had thrashed one of his chieftains. Rogaine sighed and rose. He stood regarding Stark from underbrooding brows, and at length he said, "'It is a wild tale. I can't believe it, and yet why should you lie?' He paused, as though hoping that Stark would answer that and relieve him of worry.

Stark yawned. The tale is easily proved. Wait a day or two. I will arm the city, said Rogaine. I dare not do otherwise. But I will tell you this. An astonishing, unpleasant look came into his eyes. If the attack does not come, if you have set a whole city by the ears for nothing, I will have you flayed alive, and your body tumbled over the walls for the carrion birds to feed on. He strode out, taking his retinue with him. Balin smiled.

He will do it, too, he said and dropped the bar. Stark did not answer. He stared at Balin and then at Thunas, and then at the belt hanging on the peg, in a curiously blank and yet penetrating fashion, like an animal that thinks its own thoughts. He took a deep breath. Then, as though he found the air clean of danger,

He rolled over and went instantly to sleep. Balin lifted his shoulders expressively. He grinned at Thunus. Are you positive it's human? He's beautiful, said Thonis, and tucked the claws around him. Hold your tongue. She continued to sit there, watching Stark's face as the slow dreams moved across it. Balin laughed.

It was evening again when Stark awoke. He sat up, stretching lazily. Thennis crouched by the hearthstone, stirring something savoury in a blackened pot. She wore a red curdle and a necklace of beaten gold, and her hair was combed out smooth and shining. She smiled at him and rose, bringing him his own boots and trousers carefully cleaned, and a tunic of leather tanned fine and soft as silk. Stark asked her where she got it.

Bolin stole it from the baths where the nobles go. He said you might as well have the best, she laughed. He had a devil of a time finding one big enough to fit you. She watched him with unashamed interest while he dressed. Stark said, don't burn the soup. She put her tongue out at him. Better be proud of that fine hide while you have it, she said. There's no sign of attack.

Stark was aware of sounds that had not been there. before, the pacing of men on the wall above the house, the calling of the watch. Kushat was armed and ready, and his time was running out. He hoped that Kiaran had not been delayed on the moors. Thenis said, I should explain about the belt. When Balin undressed you, he saw Kamar's name scratched on the inside of the boss, and he can open a lizard's egg without harming the shell. What about you? asked Stork. She flexed her supple fingers. I do well enough. Balin came in. He had been seeking news, but there was little to be had.

The soldiers are grumbling about a false alarm, he said. The people are excited, but more as though they were playing a game. Kushat has not fought a war for centuries. He sighed. The pity of it is, Stark, I believe your story, and I'm afraid. Thenis handed him a steaming bowl. Here, employ your tongue with this, afraid indeed. Have you forgotten the wall? No one has carried it since the city was built. Let them attack.

Stark was amused. For a child, you know much concerning war. I knew enough to save your skin, she flared and Balin smiled. She has you there, Stark. And speaking of skins, He glanced up at the belt. Or better, speaking of tailspans, which we were not, how did you come by it?

Stark told him. He had a sin on his soul, did Kamar, and he was my friend. Balin looked at him with deep respect. You are a fool, he said. Look, you. The thing is returned to Kushat. Your promise is kept. There is nothing for you here but danger.

And were I you, you, I would not wait to be flayed or slain or taken in a quarrel that is not yours." Ah, said Stark softly, but it is mine. The Lord Kiaran made it so. He too glanced at the belt. What of the talesman? Return it where he came from, Thannis said. My brother is a better thief than Camar.

He can certainly do that. No, said Balin with surprising force. We will keep it, Stark. and I. Whether it has power I do not know. But if it has, I think Kushat will need it, and in strong hands. Stark said somberly. It has power, the talesman. Whether for good or evil, I don't know. They looked at him, startled, but a touch of awe seemed to repress their curiosity. He could not tell them. He was somehow reluctant to tell anyone of that dark, vision of what lay beyond the gates of death, which the talesman of Bon Cruishak had lent him.

Baylon stood up. Well, for good or evil, at least the sacred relic of Bon Cruishok has come home. He yawned, I am going to bed. Will you come, Thanos, or will you stay in quarrel with our guest? I will stay, she said, and quarrel. Ah, well, Balin sighed, puckishly. good night. He vanished into an inner room.

Stark looked at Thanos. She had a warm mouth, and her eyes were beautiful and full of light. He smiled, holding out his hand. The night wore on, and Stark lay drowsing. Thannis had opened the curtains. Wind and moonlight swept together into the room, and she stood leaning upon the sill above the slumbering city.

The smile that lingered in the corners of her mouth, was sad and far away and very tender. Stark stirred uneasily, making small sounds in his throat. His motions grew violent. Thanos crossed the room and touched him. Instantly he was awake. Animal, she said softly, you dream. Stark shook his head.

His eyes were still clouded, though not with sleep. Blood, he said, heavy in the wind. I smell nothing but the dawn, she said and laughed. Stark rose. Get Balin. I'm going up on the wall. She did not know him now. What is it, Stark?

What's wrong? Get Balin. Suddenly it seemed that the room stifled him. He caught up his cloak and Kamar's belt and flung open the door, standing on the narrow steps outside. The moonlight caught in his eyes, pale as frostfire. Thenis shivered. Balin joined her without being called.

He too had slept but lightly. Together they followed Stark up the rough-cut stair that led to the top of the wall. He looked southward where the plain ran down from the mountains and spread away below Cushat. Nothing moved out there. Nothing marred the empty whiteness. But Stark said, They will attack at dawn. End of Chapter 4.

of Black Amazon of Mars by Lee Brackett. This Libravox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 5 They waited. Some distance away, a guard leaned against the parapet, huddled in his cloak. He glanced at them incuriously. It was bitterly cold. The wind came whistling down through the gates of death,

and below in the streets the watch-fires shuddered and flare. They waited, and still there was nothing. Balin said impatiently, How can you know they're coming? Stark shivered, a shallow rippling of the flesh that had nothing to do with cold, and every muscle of his body came alive. Phobos plunged downward.

The moonlight dimmed and changed, and the plain was very empty, very still. They will wait for darkness. They have an hour or so between moons set and dawn. Phanis muttered, dreams. Besides, I'm cold. She hesitated and then crept in under Balin's cloak. Stark had gone away from her.

She watched him sulkily where he leaned against the stone. He might have been part of it as dark and unstirring. Demos sank low toward the west. Stark turned his head, drawn in his head, drawn in, to look toward the cliffs above Cushat, soaring upward to blot out half the sky. Here, close under them, they seemed to tower outward in a curving mass, like the last wave of eternity rolling down, crested white with the ash of shattered whirls. I have stood beneath those cliffs before.

I have felt them leaning down to crush me, and I have been afraid. He was still afraid. The mind that had poured its memories into that crystal lens had been dead a million years, but neither time nor death had dulled the terror that beset Bon Cruchak in his journey through that nightmare pass. He looked into the black and narrow mouth of the gates of death, cleaving the scarp like a wound,

and the primitive ape thing within him cringed and moaned, oppressed with a sudden sense of fate. He had come, painfully, across half a world, to crouch before the gates of death. Some evil magic had let him see forbidden things, had linked his mind to an unholy bond with the long-dead mind of one who had been half a God. These evil miracles had not been for nothing. He would not be allowed to go unscathed. He drew himself up sharply then and swore.

He had left in Chaka behind, a naked boy running in a place of rocks and sun on Mercury. He had become Eric John Stark, a man and civilized. He thrust the senseless premonition from him and turned his back upon the mountains. Demos touched the horizon. A last gleam of reddish light tinged the snow in. and then was gone. Phanis, who was half asleep, said with sudden irritation, I do not believe in your barbarians, I'm going home.

She thrust Balin aside and went away down the steps. The plain was now in utter darkness under the faint northern stars. Stark settled himself against the parapet. There was a sort of timeless patience about him. Balin envied it. He would have liked to go with him. Venice. He was cold and doubtful, but he stayed. Time passed, endless minutes of it, lengthening into what seemed hours. Stark said, can you hear them? No. They come.

His hearing far keener than Bollins picked up the little sounds, the vast incoit rustling of an army on the move in stealth and darkness. Light-armed men, hunters, used to to stalking wild beasts in the snow. They could move softly, very softly. I hear nothing, Balin said, and again they waited. The westering stars moved toward the horizon, and at length in the east a dim pallor crept across the sky. The plain was still shrouded in night,

but now Stark could make out the high towers of the high city of Cushat, ghostly and indistinct. The ancient, proud, high towers of the rulers and their nobles, set above the crowded quarters of merchants and artisans and thieves, he wondered who would be king in Kushat by the time this unrisen sun had set. You were wrong, said Balin peering. There is nothing on the plane. Stark said, wait.

Swiftly now, in the thin air of Mars, the dawn came, with a rush and a leap, flooding the world with harsh light. It flashed in cruel brilliance from sword blades, from spearheads, from helmets and burnished mail, from the war-harness of beasts, glistened on bare russed heads and coats of leather, set the banners of the clans to burning, crimson and gold and green, bright against the snow. There was no sound, not a whisper in all the land. Somewhere a hunting horn sent forth one deep cry to split the morning. Then burst out the wild scurling of the mountain pipes and the broken thunder of drums, and a wordless scream of exaltation that rang back from the wall of Cushat like the very voice of battle. The men of Meck

began to move. Raggedly, slowly at first, then more swiftly, as the press of war, warriors broke and flowed. The barbarians swept toward the city as water sweeps over a broken dam. Knots and clumps of men, tall men running like deer, leaping, shouting, swinging their great brands. Riders spurring their mounts until they fled belly down, spears, axes, sword-blades, tossing, a sea of men and beasts, rushing, trampling, shaking their men, shaking their ground with the thunder of their going.

And ahead of them all came a solitary figure in blackmail, riding a raking beast trapped all in black, and burying a sable axe. Kushat came to life. There was a swarming and a yelling in the streets, and soldiers began to pour up onto the wall. A thin company, Stark thought, and shook his head. of citizens choked the alleys, and every rooftop was full. A troop of nobles went by, brave in their bright mail, to take up their post in the square by the great gate.

Balin said nothing, and Stark did not disturb his thoughts. From the look of him they were dark indeed. Soldiers came and ordered them off the wall. They went back to their own roof where they were joined by Thannis. She was in a high state of of excitement, but unafraid. Let them attack, she said. Let them break their spears against the wall. They will crawl away again. Stark began to grow restless.

Up in their high emplacements, the big ballistas creaked and thrum. The muted song of the bows became a wailing hum. Men fell and were kicked off the ledges by their fellows. The blood-howl of the clans ran. sang unceasingly on the frosty air, and Stark heard the wrap of scaling ladders against stone. Thenas said abruptly, what is that? That sound like thunder.

Rams, he answered, they are battering the gate. She listened, and Stark saw in her face the beginning of fear. It was a long fight. Stark watched it hungrily from the roof all that morning. The soldiers of Cushat did bravely and well, but they were as folded sheep against the tall killers of the mountains. By noon the officers were beating the quarters for men to replace the slain. Stark and Ballon went up again onto the wall.

The clans had suffered. Their dead lay in windrows under the wall amid the broken ladders. But Stark knew his barbarians. They had sat restless and chaffing. in the valley for many days, and now the battle madness was on them, and they were not going to be stopped. Wave after wave of them rolled up and was cast back, and came on again relentlessly. The intermittent thunder boomed still from the gates, where sweating giants swung the rams under cover of their own bowmen, and everywhere up and down through the forefront

of the fighting, rode the man in black armor, and wild cheering followed him. Balin said heavily, It is the end of Cushat. A ladder banged against the stones a few feet away. Men swarmed up the rungs, fierce-eyed clansmen with laughter in their mouths. Stark was first at the head. They had given him a spear. He spitted two men through with it and lost it,

and a third man came leaping over the parapet. Stark received him into his arms. Balin watched. He saw the warrior go crashing back, sweeping his fellows off the ladder. He saw Stark's face. He heard the sounds and smell the blood and sweat of war, and he was sick to the marrow of his bones, and his hatred for the barbarians was a terrible thing.

Stark caught up a dead man's blade, and within ten minutes, his arm was as red as a butcher's. And ever he watched the winged helm that went back and forth below, a standard to the clans. By mid-afternoon the barbarians had gained the wall in three places. They spread inward along the ledges, pouring up in a resistless tide, and the defenders broke. The route became a panic. It's all over now, Stark said. Find thanis and hide her. Balin let fall his sword.

Give me the taelsman, he whispered. And Stark saw that he was weeping. Give it to me, and I will go beyond the gates of death, and rouse Bon Cruchak from his sleep. And if he has forgotten Cushat, I will take his power into my own hands. I will fling wide the gates of death, and loose destruction on the men of Meck.

Or if the legends are all lies, then I will die. He was like a man crazed. Give me the Talesman! Stark slapped him carefully and without heat across the face. Get your sister, Balin. Hide her unless you would be uncle to a red-haired brat. He went then like a man who has been stunned. Screaming women with their children clog the ways

that led inward from the wall, and there was bloody work afoot on the rooftops and in the narrow alleys. The gate was holding still. Stark forced his way toward the square. The booths of the hucksters were overthrown, the wine jars broken and the red wine spilled. Beasts squealed and stamped, tired of their chafing harness, driven wild by the shouting and the smell of blood. The dead were heaped high where they had fallen from above. They were all soldiers here, clinging grimly to their last foothold. The deep song of the Rams shook the very stones. The iron-sheathed timbers of the gate gave back an answering scream, and, toward the end, all of the sounds grew hushed. The nobles came down slowly from the wall and mounted and sat waiting.

There were fewer of them now. Their bright armor was dented and stained, and their faces had a pallor on them. One last hammer-stroke of the Rams, with a bitter shriek, the weakened bolts tore out, and the great gate was broken through. The nobles of Cushat made their first and final charge.

As soldiers, they went up against the riders of Meck, and as soldiers they held them until they died. Those that were left were born back into the square, caught as in the crest of an avalanche. And first through the gates came the winged battle-mask of the Lord Kiaren, and the sable axe that drank men's lives where it hewed. There was a beast with no rider to claim it, tugging at its headrope. Stark swung onto the saddle-pad and cut it free.

Where the press was thickest, a welter of struggling brutes and men fighting knee to knee, there was the man in black armor, riding like a god, magnificent, born to war. Stark's eyes shone with a strange cold light. He struck his heels hard into the skelly flanks. The beast plunged forward. In and over and through, making the long sword. to sing. The beast was strong and frightened beyond fear. It bit and trampled, and Stark cut a path for them, and presently he shouted above the din. Oh, there, Kiaran! The black mask turned toward

him, and the remembered voice spoke from behind the barred slot joyously. The wonderer, the wild man. Their two mounts shocked together. The axe came down in a whistling curve, and a red sword blade flashed to meet it. Swift, swift, a ringing clash of steel, and the blade was shattered and the axe fallen to the ground. Stark pressed in. Kiaran reached for his sword, but his hand was numbed by the force of that blow, and he was slow a split second. The hilt of Stark's weapon, still clutched in his own numbed grip, fetched him a stunning, blow on the helm, so that the metal rang like a flawed bell. The Lord Kiarren reeled back only for a moment, but long enough.

Stark grasped the war mask and ripped it off, and got his hands around the naked throat. He did not break that neck as he had planned, and the Klansman who had started in to save their leader stopped and did not move. Stark knew now why the Lord Kiaran had never shown his face. The throat he held was white and strong, and his hands around it were buried in a mane of red, cold hair that fell down over the shirt of mail. A red mouth, passionate with fury,

wonderful curving bone under sculptured flesh, eyes fierce and proud, and tameless as the eyes of a young, eagle, fire blue defying him, hating him. By the gods, said Stark very softly, by the eternal gods. End of Chapter 5. Chapter 6 of Black Amazon of Mars by Lee Brackett. This Libra Fox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 6

A woman, and in that moment of amazement, she was quicker than he, There was nothing to warn him no least flicker of expression. Her two fists came up together between his outstretched arms and caught him under the jaw with a force that nearly snapped his neck. He went over backward, clean out of the saddle, and lay sprawled on the bloody stones, half stunned, the wind knocked out of him. The woman wheeled her mount, bending low, she took up the axe from where it had fallen,

and faced her warriors who were as dazed as Stark. "'I have led you!' she said. "'I have taken you, Kushat. Will any man dispute me?' They knew the axe if they did not know her. They looked from side to side uneasily, completely at a loss, and Stark, still gasping on the ground, thought he had never seen anything as proud and beautiful

as she was then in her blackmail, with her bright hair blowing and her glance like blue lightning. The nobles of Cushat chose that moment to charge. This strange unmasking of the mechish lord had given them time to rally, and now they thought that the gods had wrought a miracle to help them. They found hope, where they had lost everything but courage. A wench! they cried.

A strump it of the camps, a woman! They howled it like an epitaph, and tore into the barbarians. She, who had been the Lord Kiaran, drove the spurs in deep, so that the beast leaped forward, screaming. She went and did not look to see if any had followed, in among the men of Kushat, and the great axe rose and fell and rose again. she killed three and left two others bleeding on the stones and not once did she look back the clansmen found their tongues kiaran kiyaran kiyaran the crashing shout drowned out the sound of battle as one man they turned and followed her stark scrambling for his life underfoot could not forbear smiling their childlike minds could see only two alternatives

to slay her out of hand or to worship her. They had chosen to worship. He thought the bards would be singing of the Lord Chiaran of Meck as long as there were men to listen. He managed to take cover behind a wrecked booth and presently made his way out of the square. They had forgotten him for the moment. He did not wish to wait just then

until they or she remembered. She. He still did not. believe it quite. He touched the bruise under his jaw where she had struck him, and thought of the life-s swift strength of her, and the way she had ridden alone into battle. He remembered the death of Thorne, and how she had kept her red wolves tamed, and he was filled with wonder and a deep excitement. He remembered what she had said to him once, We are of one blood, though we be strangers.

He laughed silently, and his eyes were very bright. The tide of war had rolled on toward the King City, where from the sound of it there was hot fighting around the castle. Eddies of the main struggles swept shrieking through the streets, but the rat runs under the wall were clear. Everyone had stampeded inward, the victims with the victors close at their heels. The short northern day was almost gone. He found a hiding-place that offered reasonable safety, and settled himself to wait.

Night came, but he did not move. From the sounds that reached him, the sacking of Cushat was in full swing. They were looting the richer streets first. Their upraised voices were thick with wine and mingled with the cries of women. The reflection of many fires tinged the sky. By midnight the sounds began to slacken, and by the second hour after the city slept, drugged with wine and blood and the weariness of battle. Stark went silently out into the streets toward the King's city.

According to the immemorial pattern of Martian city-states, the castles of the King and the noble families were clustered together in solitary grandeur. Many of the towers were fallen now, the great halls opened to the sky. Time had crushed the grandeur that had been Cushat more fatally than the boot of any conqueror. In the house of the king, the flamboys guttered low and the chieftains of Meck slept with their weary pipers among the benches of the banquet hall. In the niches of the tall carved portal, the guards knotted over their spears. They too had fought that.

day. Even so, Stark did not go near them. Shivering slightly in the bitter wind, he followed the bulk of the massive walls until he found a post-turned door half open as some kitchen knave had left it in his flight. Stark entered, moving like a shadow. The passageway was empty, dimly lighted by a single torch. A stairway branched off from it, and he climbed that, picking his way by guests and his memories of similar castles he had seen in the past. He emerged into a narrow hall, obviously for the use of servants. A tapestry closed the end, stirring the chilled draught that drew along the floor. He peered around it, and saw a massive vaulted corridor.

The stone walls paneled in wood, much split and blackened by time, but still showing forth the wonderful carvings of beasts and men, larger than life, and overlaid with gold and bright enamel. From the corridor a single doorway opened, and Otar slept before it, curled on a pellet like a dog. Stark went back down the narrow hall. He was sure that there must be a back entrance to the king's chambers, and he found the little door he was looking for. From there on was a darkness. He felt his way, stepping with infinite caution, and presently there was a faint gleam of light filtering around the edges of another curtain of heavy tapestry. He crept toward it, and heard a man's slow breathing on the other side. He drew the curtain back, a careful

inch. The man was sprawled on a bench athwart the door. He slept the honest sleep of exhaustion, His sword in his hand, the stains of his days work still upon him. He was alone in the small room. A door in the farther wall was closed. Stark hit him and caught the sword before it fell. The man grunted once and became utterly relaxed. Stark bound him with his own harness and shoved a gag in his mouth and went on through the door in the opposite wall.

The room was large and high and full of shadows. A fire burned low on the hearth, and the uncertain light showed dimly the hangings and the rich stuffs that carpeted the floor, and the dark sparse shapes of furniture. Stark made out the latticework of a covered bed, let into the wall after the northern fashion. She was there, sleeping.

Her red, gold hair, the color of the flames. He stood a moment watching her, and then, as though she sensed his presence, she stirred and opened her eyes. She did not cry out. He had known that she would not. There was no fear in her. She said with a kind of wry humor, I will have a word with my guards about this.

She flung aside the covering and rose. She was almost as tall as he, white-skinned and very straight. He noted the long thighs, the narrow loins and magnificent shoulders, the small virginal breasts. She moved as a man moves without coquetry. A long furred gown that stark guest had lately graced the shoulders of the king lay over a chair. She put it on. Well, wild man. I have come to warn you.

He hesitated over her name, and she said, My mother named me Kiara, if that seems better to you. She gave him her falcons glance. I could have slain you in the square, but now I think you did me a service. The truth would have come out some time, better than when they had no time to think about it. She laughed. They will follow me now over the edge of the world if I asked them. Stark says slowly,

even beyond the gates of death? Certainly there, above all, there. She turned to one of the tall windows and looked out at the cliffs and the high notch of the pass, touched with greenish silver by the little moons. Bon Cruciak was a great king. He came out of nowhere to rule the Norlands with a rod of iron, and men speak of him still as half a god.

Where did he get his power, if not from beyond the gates of death? Why did he go back there at the end of his days, if not to hide away his secret? Why did he build Kushat to guard the pass forever, if not to hoard that power out of reach of all the other nations of Mars? Yes, Stark, my men will follow me, and if they do not, I will go alone. "'You are not, Bon Crucchak, nor am I.' He took her by the shoulders. "'Listen, Kiarra. You're already king of the Norlands,

and half a legend as you stand, be content.' "'Content?' Her face was close to his, and he saw the blaze of it, the white intensity of ambition and an iron pride. "'Are you content?' she asked him. Have you ever been content?" He smiled. For strangers, we do not know each other well.

No, but the spurs are not so deep in me. The wind and the fire. One spins its strength in wondering, the other devours. But one can help the other. I made you an offer once, and you said you would not bargain unless you could look into my eyes. Look now.

He did, and his hands upon her shoulders trembled. No, he said harshly. You're a fool, Kiara. Would you be as Otar mad with what you have seen? O-Tar is an old man, and likely crazed before he crossed the mountains. Besides, I am not O-Tar. Stark said somberly. Even the bravest may break.

Bon Crucach himself. She must have seen the shadow of that horror in his eyes, for he felt her body tense. What of Bon Crucoc? What do you know, Stark? Tell me. He was silent, and she went from him angrily. You have the talesman, she said, that I am sure of. And if need be, I will flay you alive to get it.

She faced him across the room. But whether I get it or not, I will go through the gates of death. I must wait now until after the thaw. The warm wind will blow soon, and the gorges will be running full. But afterward I will go, and no talk of fears and demons will stop me. She began to pace the room with long strides, and the full skirts of the gown made a subtle whispering about her. You do not know, she said in a low and bitter voice.

I was a girl child without a name. By the time I could walk, I was a servant in the house of my grandfather. The two things that kept me living were pride and hate. I left my scrubbing of floors to practice arms with the young boys. I was beaten for it every day. But every day I went. I knew even then that only force would free me, and my father was a king's son, a good man of his hands.

His blood was strong in me. I learned. She held her head very high. She had earned the right to hold it so. She finished quietly. I have come a long way. I will not turn back now. Kiarra.

Stark came and stood before her. I am talking to you as a fighting man, an equal. There may be power behind the gates of death I do not know. But this I have seen, madness, horror, and evil that is beyond our understanding. I think you will not accuse me of cowardice, and yet I would not go into that pass for all the power of all the king, Kings of Mars. Once started, he could not stop.

The full force of that dark vision of the talesman swept over him again in memory. He came closer to her, driven by the need to make her understand. Yes, I have the talesman, and I have had a taste of its purpose. I think Bon Cruchak left it as a warning so that none would follow him. I have seen the temples and the temples and the... palaces glitter in the ice. I have seen the gates of death, not with my own eyes, Kiyara, but with his, with the eyes and the memories of Bon Cruciak. He had caught her again, his hands strong on her strong arms. Oh, you believe me,

are must you see for yourself the dreadful things that walk those buried streets, the shapes that rise from nowhere in the midst of the pass. Her gaze burned into his. Her breath was hot and sweet upon his lips, and she was like a sword between his hands, shining and unafraid. Give me the talesman, let me see. He answered furiously, You were mad, as mad as O-Tar.

Then he kissed her, in a rage, in a panic, lest all that beauty be destroyed, a kiss as brutal as a blow that left him shaken. She backed away slowly, one step, and he thought she would have killed him. He said heavily, If you will see, you will. The thing is here. He opened the boss and laid the crystal in her outstretched hand. He did not meet her eyes.

Sit down, hold the flat side against your brow. She sat in a great chair of carving wood. Stark noticed that her hand was unsteady, her face the color of white ash. He was glad she did not have the axe where she could reach it. She did not play at anger. For a long moment she studied the intricate lens, the incredible depository of a man's mind. then she raised it slowly to her forehead.

He saw her grow rigid in the chair. How long he watched beside her he never knew, seconds and eternity. He saw her eyes turn blank and strange and a shadow come into her face, changing it subtly, altering the lines, so that it seemed almost a stranger was peering through her flesh. All at once, in a voice, that was not her own, she cried out terribly, Oh, God of Mars!

The talesman dropped, rolling to the floor, and Kiara fell forward into Stark's arms. He thought at first that she was dead. He carried her to the bed in an agony of fear that surprised him with its violence, and laid her down, and put his hand over her heart. It was beating strongly. Relief that was almost a sickness swept over him.

He turned, searching vaguely for wine, and saw the tailsman. He picked it up and put it back inside the boss. A jeweled flagon stood on a table across the room. He took it and started back, and then, abruptly, there was a wild clamor in the hall outside, and O-Tar was shouting Kiara's name, pounding the door. It was not barred. In another moment they would burst through, and he knew that they would not stop to inquire

what he was doing there. He dropped the flagon and went out swiftly the way he had come. The guard was still unconscious. In the narrow hall beyond, Stark hesitated. A woman's voice was rising high above the tumult in the main corridor, and he thought he recognized it. He went to the tapestry curtain and looked for the second time around its edge. The lofty space was full of men, newly awakened from their heavy sleep, and as nervous as so many bears.

Phanis struggled in the grip of two of them. Her scarlet curdle was torn, her hair flying in wild elflocks, and her face was the face of a mad thing. The whole story of the doom of Cushat was written large upon it. She screamed again and again, and would not be silenced. Tell her, the witch that leads you. Tell her that she is already doomed to death with all her army. O-Tar opened up the door of Kiara's room. Thanes surged forward.

She must have fled through all that castle before she was caught, and Stark's heart ached for her. You! She screeched through the doorway, and poured out all the filth of the quarter upon Kiara's name. Balin has gone to bring doom upon you. He will open wide the gates of death, and then you will die. Die, die!

Stark felt the shock of a terrible dread as he let the curtain fall. Mad with hatred against his conquerors, Balin had fulfilled his raging promise and had gone to fling open the gates of death. Remembering his nightmare vision of the shining evil ones whom Bon Crucchak had long ago prisoned beyond those gates, Stark felt a sickness grow within him as he went down the stairs and out the post and door. It was almost dawn.

He looked up at the brooding cliffs, and it seemed to him that the wind in the pass had a sound of laughter that mocked his growing dread. He knew what he must do if an ancient, mysterious horror was not to be released upon Cushat. I may still catch Bullen before he goes too far. If I don't, he dared not think of that. He began to walk very swiftly through the night streets toward the distant towering gates of death.

End of Chapter 6. Chapter 7 of Black Amazon of Mars by Lee Brackett. This Librevox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 7. It was passed to you. noon. He had climbed high toward the saddle of the pass. Kushat lay small below him, and he could see now the pattern of the gorges, cut ages deep in the living rock that carried the spring torrents of the watershed around the mighty ledge on which the city was built. The pass itself

was channeled, but only by its own snows and melting ice. It was too high for a watercourse. Nevertheless, Stark thought, A man might find it hard to stay alive if he were caught there by the thaw. He had seen nothing of Balin. The gods knew how many hours start he had. Stark imagined him, scrambling wide-eyed over the rocks,

driven by the same madness that had sent Thanos up into the castle to call down destruction on Kiara's head. The sun was brilliant, but without warmth. Stark shivered, and the icy wind blew strong. The cliffs hung over him, vast and sheer and crushing, and the narrow mouth of the pass was before him. He could go no farther.

He would turn back now. But he did not. He began to walk forward into the gates of death. The light was dim and strange at the bottom of that cleft. Little veils of mist crept and clung between the ice and the rock, thickened, became more dense as he went farther and farther into the pass. He could not see, and the wind spoke with many tongues, piping in the crevices of the cliffs.

The steps of the earthmen slowed and faltered. He had known fear in his life before, but now he was carrying the burden of two men's terrors, Bon Cruchak's and his own. He stopped, enveloped in the clinging mist. He tried to reason with himself that Bon Cruchak's fears had died a million years ago, that Otar had come this way and lived, and Balin had come also, but the thin veneer of civilizations sloughed away and left him with the naked bones of truth.

His nostrils twitched to the same. smell of evil. The subtle, unclean taint that only a beast are one as close to it as he can sense and know. Every nerve was a point of pain, raw with apprehension. An overpowering recognition of danger, hidden somewhere, mocking at him, made his very body change, draw in upon itself and flatten forward, so that when at last he went on again,

he was more like a four-footed thing than a man walking upright. Infinite wary, silent, moving surely over the ice and the tumbled rock, he followed Balin. He had ceased to think. He was going now on sheer instinct. The path led on and on. It grew darker, and in the dim, uncanny twilight, there were looming shapes that menaced him, and ghostly wings that brushed him, and a terrible

stillness that was not broken by the eerie voices of the wind. Rock and mist and ice, nothing that moved or lived, and yet the sense of danger deepened, and when he paused the beating of his heart was like thunder in his ears. Once far away, he thought he heard the echoes of a man's voice crying, but he had no sight of Wallen. The pass began to drop, and the twilight deepened into a kind of sickly night. On and down, more slowly now, crouching, slinking, heavily oppressed, tempted to snarl at boulders and tear at wraiths of fog.

He had no idea of the miles he had traveled. But the ice was thicker now, the cold intense. The rock walls broke off sharply, the mist thinned. The pallid darkness lifted to a clear twilight. He came to the end of the gates of death. Stark stopped. Ahead of him, almost blocking the end of the pass, something dark and high and massive loomed in the thinning mists.

It was a great Karn, and upon it sat a figure facing outward from the gates of death, as though it kept watch over whatever country lay beyond, the figure of a man in antique Martian armor. After a moment, Stark crept toward the Korn, he was still almost all savage, torn between fear and fascination. He was forced to scramble over. the lower rocks of the corn itself. Quite suddenly, he felt a hard shock and a flashing sensation of warmth that was somehow inside his own flesh, and not in any tempering of the frozen air.

He gave a startled leap forward and whirled, looking up into the face of the male figure with the confused idea that it had reached down and struck him. It had not moved, of course, and Stark knew, with no need of anyone to tell him, that he looked into the face of Bon Cruciak. It was a face made for battles and for ruling. The bony ridge is harsh and strong. The hollows under them worn deep with years. Those eyes, dark shadows under the rusty helm,

had dreamed high dreams, and neither age nor death had conquered them. and even in death Bon Cruchok was not unarmed. Clad as for battle in his ancient male, he held upright between his hands a mighty sword. The pommel was a ball of crystal large as a man's fist that held within it a spark of intense brilliance. The little blinding flame throbbed with its own force, and the sword-blade blazed with a white cruel radiance. bon crushock dead but frozen to eternal changelessness by the bitter cold sitting here upon his corn for a million years and warding forever the inner end of the gates of death as his ancient city of kushat warded the outer Stark took two cautious steps closer to Bond Cruchak and felt again the shock and the flaring heat in his blood.

He recoiled, satisfied. The strange force in the blazing sword made an invisible barrier across the mouth of the pass, protected Bond Cruchok himself. A barrier of short waves, he thought, of the type used in deep therapy, having no heat in themselves, but increasing the heat in body cells by increasing their vibration. But these waves were stronger than any he had known before. A barrier, a wall of force, closing the inner end of the gates of death. A barrier that was not designed against man.

Stark shivered. He turned from the somber, brooding form of Bon Cruciak, and his eyes followed the gaze of the dead king, out beyond the Karn. He looked across this forbidden land within the gates of death. At his back was the mountain barrier. Before him, a handful of miles to the north,

the terminus of the polar cap rose like a cliff of bluish crystal, soaring up to touch the early stars. Locked in between those two titanic walls was a great valley of ice. White and glimmering that valley was, and very still and very beautiful. The ice shaped gracefully into curving domes and hollows, and in the center of it stood a dark tower of stone,

a cyclopean bulk that stark knew must go down an unguessable distance to its base on the bedrock. It was like the tower in which Kamar had died, but this one was not a broken ruin. It loomed with alien arrogance, and within its bulk pallid lights flickered eerily, and it was crowned by a cloud of shimmering darkness. It was like the tower of his dread vision, the tower that he had seen not as Eric John Stark, but as Bonn Cruchok.

Stark's gaze dropped slowly from the evil tower to the curving ice of the valley, and the fear within him grew beyond all bounds. He had seen that too in his vision, the glimmering ice, the domes and hollows of it. He had looked down through it at the city that lay beneath, and he had seen those who came and went in the buried streets. Stark hunkered down, for a long while he did not stir. He did not want to go out there.

He did not want to go out from the grim, warning figure of Bon Cruishok with his blazing sword into that silent valley. He was afraid, afraid of what he might see if he went there and looked down through the ice, afraid of the final dreadful fulfillment of his vision. But he had come after Balin, and Balin must be out there somewhere. He did not want to go, but he had come after Balin. He was himself and he must. He went, going very softly out toward the Tower of Stone, and there was no sound in all that land. The last of the twilight had faded.

The ice gleamed faintly luminous under the stars, and there was light beneath it, a soft radiance that filled all the valley with the glow of a buried moon. Stark tried to keep his eyes upon the tower. he did not wish to look down at what lay under his stealthy feet. Inevitably, he looked. The temples and the palaces glittering in the ice. Level upon level going down. Wells of soft lights spanned with soaring bridges.

Slender spires rising, an endless variation of streets and crystal walls exquisitely patterned above and below and overlapping. so that it was like looking down through a thousand giant snowflakes. A metropolis of gossamer and frost, fragile and lovely as a dream, locked in the clear, pure vault of the ice. Stork saw the people of the city, passing along the bright streets.

Their outlines blurred by the icy vault as things are half obscured by water. The creatures of vision vaguely shining, infinitely evil. He shut his eyes and waited until the shock and the dizziness left him. Then he set his gaze resolutely on the tower and crept on over the glassy sky

that covered those buried streets. Silence. Even the wind was hushed. He had gone, perhaps half the distance, when the cry rang out. It burst upon the valley with a shocking violence. Stark, Stark! The ice rang with it.

Curving ridges picked up his name and flung it back and forth with eerie crystal voices, and the voices fled out whispering, Stark, Stark! Until it seemed that the very mountains spoke. Stark whirled about. In the pallid gloom between the ice and the stars, there was light enough to see the corn behind. him and the dim figure atop it with the shining sword.

Light enough to see, Kiara, and the dark knot of riders who had followed her through the gates of death. She cried his name again. Come back! Come back! The ice of the valley answered mockingly, Come back, come back! And Stark was gripped with a terror that held him motionless.

She should not have called him. She should not have made a sound in that deadly place. A man's hoarse scream rose above the flying echoes. The riders turned and fled suddenly, the squealing, kissing beasts crowding each other, floundering wildly on the rocks of the corn, stampeding back into the pass. Kiara was left alone.

Stark saw her fight the rearing beast she rode, and then flung herself out of the saddle and let it go. She came toward him, running, clad all in her black armor, the great axe swinging high. Behind you, Stark, oh gods of Mars! He turned then and saw them, coming out from the tower of stone, the pale, shining creatures that move so swiftly across the ice,

so fleet and swift, that no man living could outrun them. He shouted to Kiara to turn back. He drew his sword and over his shoulder. He cursed her in a black fury because he could hear her mailed feet coming on behind him. The gliding creatures, sleek and slender, reed-like, bending, delicate as wraiths.

Their bodies shaped from northern rainbows of amethyst and rose. If they should touch Kier, if their loathsome hands should touch her. Stark let out one raging cat-like scream and rushed them. The opalescent bodies slipped away beyond his reach. The creatures watched him. They had no faces, but they watched. They were eyeless but not blind,

earless, but not without hearing. The inquisitive tendrils that formed their sensory organs stirred and shifted, like the petals of ungodly flowers, and the color of them was the white frost fire that dances on the snow. Go back, Kiara! But she would not go, and he knew that they would not have let her. She reached him, and they set their backs together. The shining ones ringed them round, many feet away across the ice, and watched the long

sword and the great hungry axe. and there was something in the lithsome swaying of their bodies that suggested laughter. "'You fool!' said Stark. "'You bloody fool!' "'And you?' answered Kiara. "'Oh, yes, I know about Balin.' "'That mad girl screaming in the palace,

"'she told me, and you were seen from the wall, "'climbing to the gates of death. "'I tried to catch you. "'Why?' "'She did not answer that. "'They won't fight a star. Stark, do you think we could make it back to the Karn? No, but we can try.

Guarding each other's backs, they began to walk toward Bon Khrushok and the pass. If they could once reach the barrier, they would be safe. Stark knew now what Bon Khrushok's wall of force was built against, and he began to guess the riddle of the gates of death. The shining ones glided with them out of reach. They did not try to bar the way. They formed a circle around the man and woman, moving with them and around them at the same time, an endless weaving chain of many bodies shining with soft jewel tones of color.

They drew closer and closer to the corn to the brooding figure of Bon Cruchak and his sword. It crossed Stark's mind that the creatures were playing with him and Kiara. Yet they had no weapons, almost he began to hope. From the tower where the shimmering cloud of darkness clung came a black crescent of force that swept across the ice field like a sickle and gathered the two humans in. Stark felt a shock of numbing cold that turned his nerves to ice. His sword dropped from his hand,

and he heard Kiara's axe go down. His body was without strength, without feeling, dead. He fell, and the shining ones glided in toward him. End of Chapter 7. Chapter 8 of Black Amazon of Mars by Lee Breckett. This Librevox recording is in the public domain. Twice before in his life, Stark had come near to freezing. It had been like this, the numbness and the cold,

and yet it seemed that the dark force had struck rather at his nerve centers than at his flesh. He could not see Kiara, who was behind him, but he heard the metallic clashing of her male, and one small whispered cry, and he knew that she had fallen too. The glowing creatures surrounded him. He saw their bodies bending over him, the frosty tendrils of their faces, writhing as though in excitement or delight. Their hands touched him, little hands with seven fingers, deft and frail.

Even his numbed flesh felt the terrible cold of their touch, freezing as outer space. He yelled or tried to, but they were not abashed. They lifted him and bore him toward the tower, a company of them, bearing his heavy weight upon their gleaming shoulders. He saw the tower loom high and higher still above him. The cloud of dark force that crowned it blotted out the stars.

It became too huge and high to see at all, and then there was a low, flat arch of stone close above his face, and he was inside. Straight overhead, a hundred feet, two hundred he could not tell, was a globe of crystal fitted into the top of the tower, as a jewel is held in a setting. The air around it was shadowed with the same eerie gloom that hovered outside,

but less dense, so that Stark could see the smoldering purple spark that burned within the globe, sending out its dark vibrations. A globe of crystal with a heart of sullen flame. Stark remembered the sword

of Bonn Khrushak and the white fire that burned in its hilt. Two globes, the bright cord and the dark. The sword of Bon Cruchak touched the blood with heat. The globe of the tower deadened the flesh with cold. It was the same force but at opposite ends of the spectrum. Stark saw the cryptic controls of that glooming globe, a bank of them on a wide stone ledge just inside the tower close beside him.

There were shining ones on that ledge, tending those controls, and there were other strange and massive mechanisms there, too. Flying spirals of ice climbed up inside the tower, spanning the great stone well with spidery bridges, joining icy galleries. In some of those galleries, Stark vaguely glimpsed rigid, gleaming figures, like statues of ice,

but he could not see them clearly as he was carried on. He was being carried downward. He passed slits in the wall and knew that the pallid lights he had seen through them were the moving bodies of the creatures as they went up and down these high-flung icy bridges. He managed to turn his head to look down and saw what was beneath him. The well of the tower plunged down a good five hundred feet to bedrock, widening as it went, the web of ice bridges and the web of ice bridges and the, The spiral ways went down as well as up, and the creatures that carried him were moving smoothly along a transparent ribbon of ice, no more than a yard in width, suspended over that terrible drop.

Stark was glad that he could not move just then. One instinctive start of horror would have thrown him and his bearers to the rock below and would have carried Kiara with him. Down and down, gliding in utter silence along the descending spiral ribbon. The great glooming crystal grew remote above him. Ice was solid now in the slots of the walls. He wondered if they had brought Ballin this way. There were other openings, wide arches like the one they had brought their captives through, and these gave stark brief glimpses of broad avenues and unguessable buildings. shaped from the pellucid ice, and flooded with the soft radiance that was like eerie moonlight.

At length on what Stark took to be the third level of the city, the creatures bore him through one of these archways into the streets beyond. Below him now was the translucent thickness of ice that formed the floor of this level and the roof of the level beneath. He could see the blurred tops of delicate minarets, the clustering roofs that shone like chips of diamond. Above him was an icy roof. Elfin spires rose toward it, delicate as needles.

Lacey battlements and little domes, buildings star-shaped, wheel-shaped, the fantastic lovely shapes of snow crystals, frosted over with a sparkling foam of light. The people of the city gathered along the way to watch, a living, shifting rainbow of amethyst and rose and green, against the pure blue-white. And there was no least whisper of sound anywhere. For some distance they went through a geometric maze of streets, and then there was a cathedral-like building, all arched and spired,

standing in the center of a twelve-pointed plaza. Here they turned and bore their captives in. Stark saw a vaulted roof, very slim and high, etched with a glittering tracery that might have been carving of an alien sort, delicate as the weavings of spiders. The feet of his barrows were silent on the icy paving. At the far end of the long vault sat seven of the shining ones in high seats marvelously shaped from the ice, and before them, gray-faced, shuddering with cold, and not noticing it, drugged with sick horror, stood Balin.

He looked around once and did not speak. Stark was set on his feet, with Kiara beside him. He saw her face, and it was terrible to see the fear in her eyes that had never shown fear before. He himself was learning why men went mad beyond the gates of death. Chill, dreadful fingers touched him expertly. A flash of pain drove down his spine, and he could stand again. The seven who sat in the high seats were motionless,

their bright tendrils stirring with infinite delicacy, as though they studied the three humans who stood before them. Stark thought he could feel a cold, soft fingering of his brain. It came to him that these creatures were probably telepaths. They lacked organs of speech, and yet they must have some efficient means of communications. Telepathy was not uncommon among the many races of the solar system, and Stark had had experience with it before.

He forced his mind to relax. The alien impulse was instantly stronger. He sent out his own questing thought, and felt it brushed the edges of a consciousness so utterly foreign to his own that he knew he could never probe it, even had he had the skill. He learned one thing, that the shining, faceless ones looked upon him with equal horror and loathing. They recoiled from the unnatural human features, and most of all, most strongly, they abhorred the warmth of human flesh. Even the infantessable amount of heat radiated by their half-frozen human bodies caused the ice-folk discomfort.

Stork marshalled his imperfect abilities and projected a mental question to the seven. What do you want of us? The answer came back, faint and imperfect, as though the gap between their alien minds was almost too great to bridge, and the answer was one word. Freedom. Balin spoke suddenly. He voiced only a whisper, and yet the sound was shockingly loud

in that crystal vault. They have asked me already. Tell them no, Stark. Tell them no. He looked at Kiara then, a look of murderous hatred. If you turn them loose upon Kushut, I will kill you with my own hands before I die.

Stark spoke again, silently to the seven, I do not understand. Again, the struggling, difficult thought. We are the old race, the kings of the glacial ice. Once we held all the land beyond the mountains. Outside the pass you call the gates of death. Stark had seen the ruins of the towers out on the moors. He knew how far their kingdom had extended.

We controlled the ice, far outside the polar cap. Our towers blanketed the land with a dark force drawn from Mars itself, from the magnetic field of the planet, that radiation bars out heat from the sun and even from the awful winds that blow warm from the south. So there was never any thaw. Our cities were many, and our race was great. Then came Bon Crucoc from the south.

He waged a war against us. He learned the secret of the crystal globes and learned how to reverse their force and use it against us. He, leading his army, destroyed our towers one by one and drove us back. Mars needed water. The outer ice was melted. Our lovely cities crumbled to nothing, so that creatures like Bon Crucchok might have water, and our people died.

We retreated to the last, to this, our ancient polar citadel, behind the gates of death. Even here, Boncuchak followed. He destroyed even this tower once at the time of the thaw. but this city is founded in polar ice, and only the upper levels were harmed. Even Bonn Khrushok could not touch the heart of the eternal polar cap of Mars. When he saw that he could not destroy us utterly,

he set himself in death to guard the gates of death with his blazing sword that we might never again regain. claim our ancient dominion. That is what we mean when we ask for freedom. We ask that you take away the sword of Bon Cruchak so that we may once again go out through the gates of death. Stark cried aloud hoarsely. No! He knew the barren deserts of the south, the wastes of red dust, the dead sea bottoms, the terrible thirst of Mars, growing greater with every year of the million that had passed since von Crucocke locked the gates of death.

He knew the canals, the pitiful waterways that were all that stood between the people of Mars and extinction. He remembered the yearly release from death when the spring thaw brought the water rushing down from the north. He thought of these cold creatures. going forth, building again their great towers of stone, sheathing half a world in ice that would never melt. He thought of the people of Jakara, of Valkis, and Barakish, 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. He said again, No, never. The distant thought voice of the seven spoke, and this time the question was addressed to Kiara. Stark saw her face. She did not know the Moors, he knew, but she had memories of her own, the mountain valleys of Meck, the moors, the snowy gorges. She looked at the shiny ones in their high seats and said, If I take that sword, it will be to use against you as Bon Cushauchak did. Stark knew that the seven had understood the thought behind her words. He felt that they were amused.

The secret of that sword was lost a million years ago. The day Bon Cruchak died, neither you nor anyone now knows how to use it as he 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 man is full, of the woman's image, and the mind of the woman turns to him. Also, there is a link between the large man and the small man, less strong, but strong enough. The thought voice of the seven finished. The large man will take away the sword for us, because he must, to save the other two.

Kiyara turned to Stark. They cannot force you, Stark. Don't let them. No matter what they do to me, don't let them. Balin stared at her with certain wonder. You would die to protect Kushat? Not Kushat alone, though it's people too are human. She said almost angrily.

There are my red wolves, a wild pack but my own. And others. She looked at Balin. What do you say? Your life against the Norlands? Balin made an effort to lift his head as high as hers, and the red jewel flashed in his ear. He was a man crushed by the falling of his world

and terrified by what his mad passion had led him into here beyond the gates of death, but he was not afraid to die. He said so, and even Kiara knew that he spoke the truth. But the seven were not dismayed. Stark knew that, when their thought voice whispered in his mind, "'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. 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 himself between them and Kiara. He struck out raging, and because he was almost as quick as they, he caught one of the slim, luminous bodies between his hands. The utter coldness of that alien flesh burned his hands as frost will burn. even so he clung on snarling, and saw the tendrils writhe and stiffened as though in pain.

Then, from the crystal rod, a thread of darkness spun itself to touch his brain with silence and the cold that lies between the worlds. He 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 he again opened his eyes,

he was lying on the wide stone ledge at ice level. Beside him was the arch that led outside. Close above his head was the control bank that he had seen before. Kiyara and Bollin were there also, so 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 mind were awake, terribly awake. Stark saw

their eyes and his heart turned within him. Keow looked at him. She did not speak, But she had no need to. No matter what they do to me. She had not feared the swordsman of Cushat. She had not feared her red wolves when he unmassed her in the square. She was afraid now, but she warned him, ordered him not to save her. They cannot force you. Stark don't let them. And Bollin too pleaded with him for Cushat.

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.

He tried to move, to crawl toward Kiaro standing like a carbon image in her blackmail. He could not. Again, her fierce, proud glance met his, and the silent laughter of the ice-folk echoed in his mind, and he thought it very strange that in this moment now he should realize that there had never been another woman like her on all the worlds of the sun. The fear she felt was not for herself.

It was for him. 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 men who have come before you through the gates of death. Stark raised his eyes to where their slender fingers pointed

and saw the icy galleries around the tower, saw more clearly the icy statues in them that he had only glimpsed before. Men set like images in the galleries, men whose bodies were sheathed in a glittering mail of ice, sealing them forever. Warriors, nobles, fanatics and thieves, the wonders of a million years who had dared to enter this forbidden valley, and had remained forever.

He 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 woman and this man will die, unless you choose to say, save them. We will show you, human, how they died. One of the ice-folk bent and touched the

squat round mechanism that faced Balin and Kiara. Another shifted the pattern of control on the master bank. The wheel of crystal rods on that squat mechanism began to turn. The rods It's blurred, became a disk 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 whirring blur. The glooming shadow of the globe deepened, coalesced. It began to lengthen and descend, stretching itself down toward the spinning disk. 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 Kiera and Bollen, 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. Watch the chill moats brightened. watched the tracery of frost whiten over Kiaras male, Touch bollins' 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 marble 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 again. Behold their eyes and how they suffer. Only minutes, human, take away the sword of Bonn Khrushak. "'Open for us the gates of death, and we will release these two alive.' Stark felt again the flashing stab of pain along his nerves as one of the shining creatures moved behind him. Life and feeling came back into his limbs.

He struggled to his feet. The hundreds of the ice-folk on the bridges and galleries watched him in an eager silence. He did not look at them. His eyes were on Chiaras, and now her eyes pleaded. Don't, Stark, don't border the life of the Norlands for me. The thought voice beat at Stark, cutting into his mind with cruel urgency. Hurry, human, they are already beginning to die. Take away the sword and let them live.

Stark turned. He cried out in a voice that made the icy bridges tremble. I will take the sword! He staggered out then, out through the archway across the ice, toward the distant corn that blocked the gates of death. End of Chapter 8. Chapter 9 of Black Amazon of Mars by Lee Brackett. This Labor Vox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 9. Across the glowing ice of the valley, Stark went at a stumbling run that grew swifter and more sure as his cold-numbed body began to regain its functions. And behind him, pouring out of the tower to watch, came the shining ones. They followed after him, gliding lightly. He could sense their excitement, the cold, strange ecstasy of triumph. He 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 man, gone and forgotten. The seven spoke once more a warning. If you turn toward us with the sword, the woman and the man will die, and you will die as well. For neither you nor any other can now use the sword as a weapon of offense. Stark ran on. He was thinking then only of Kiara,

with the frost crystals gleaming on her marble flesh and her eyes full of mute torment. The corn loomed up ahead dark and high. It seemed to Stark that the brooding figure of the black, Bon Crucik watched him coming with those shadowed eyes beneath the rusty helm. The great sword blazed between those dead frozen hands. The ice folk had slowed their forward rush. They stopped and waited, well back from the cairn.

Stark reached the edge of tumbled rock. He felt the first warm flare of the force waves in his blood, and slowly the chill began to creep out from his bones. He climbed, scrambling upward over the rough stones of the karn. Abruptly then, at Bon Cruchak's feet, he slipped and fell. For a second it seemed that he could not move. His back was turned toward the ice-folk. His body was bent forward and shielded, so his hands worked with feverish speed.

From his cloak he tore a strip of cloth. From the iron boss he took the littering lens, the talesman of Bon Crucuchak. Stark laid the lens against his brow and bound it on. The remembered shock, the flood and sweep of memories that were not his own. The mind of Boncrucuchak thundering its warning, its hard-won knowledge of an ancient, epic war. He opened his own mind wide to receive these memories. before he had fought against them now he knew that they were his one small chance in this swift gamble with death two things only of his own he kept firm in that staggering tide of another man's memories two names, Kiara and Balin.

He rose up again, and now his face had a strange look, a curious duality. The features had not changed, but somehow the lines of the flesh had altered subtly, so that it was almost as though the old unconquerable king himself had risen again in battle. He mounted the last step or two and stood before Bon Cruciak. A shudder ran through him, a sort of gathering and settling of the flesh, as though Stark's being had accepted the stranger within it. His eyes, cold and pale as the very ice that sheathed the valley, burned with a cruel light. He reached and took the sword out of the frozen hands of Bon Crucoc.

As though it were his own, he knew the secret of the metal rings that bound its hilt below the ball of crystal. The savage throb of the invisible radiation beat in his quickening flesh. He was warm again,

his blood running swiftly, his muscles sure and strong. He touched the rings and turned them. The fan-shaped aura of force that had closed the gates of death, narrowed in, and as it narrowed it leaped up from the blade of the sword in a tongue of pale fire, faintly shimmering, made visible now by the full focus of its strength. Stark felt the wave of horror bursting from the minds of the ice-folk as they perceived what he had done, and he laughed. His bitter laughter rang harsh across the

valley as he turned to face them, and he heard in his brain the shuddering silent shriek that went up from all that gathered company. Bon Cruzhak! Bon Crucoc has returned! They had touched his mind. They knew. He laughed again and swept the sword in a flashing arc, and watched the long, bright blade of force strike out, more terrible than steel,

against the rainbow bodies of the shining ones. They fell. Like flowers under a scythe, they fell. And all across the ice, the ones who were yet untouched, turned about in their hundreds and fled back toward the tower. Stark came leaping down the cairn, the talesman of Bon Cruchak bound upon his brow, the sword of Bon Crucuchak blazing in his hand.

He swung that all. blade as he ran. The force beam that sprang from it cut through the press of creatures fleeing before him, hampered by their own numbers as they crowded back through the archway. He had only a few short seconds to do what he had to do, rushing with great strides across the ice, spurning the withered bodies of the dead, and then from the glooming darkness that hovered around the tower of stone, the black cold beam should. struck down. Like a coiling whip it lashed him.

The deadly numbness invaded the cells of his flesh, arched in the marrow of his bones. The bright force of the sword battled the chill invaders, and a corrosive agony tore at Stark's inner body where the antipathetic radiations waged war. His steps faltered. He gave one hoarse cry of pain, and then his limbs failed and he went heavily to his knees.

Instinct only made him claim to the sword. Waves of blinding anguish racked him, the coiling lash of darkness encircled him, and its touch was the abysmal cold of outer space, striking deep into his heart. Hold the sword close. Hold it closer like a shield. The pain is great.

but I will not die unless I drop the sword. Bon Crushock the mighty had fought this fight before. Stark raised the sword again close against his body. The fierce pulse of its brightness drove back the cold. Not far, for the freezing touch was very strong, but far enough so that he could rise again and stagger on. The dark force of the top, writhed and licked about him. He could not escape it. He slashed it in a blind fury with the

blazing sword, and where the forces met, a flicker of lightning leaped in the air, but it would not be beaten back. He screamed at it, a raging cat-cry that was all stark, all-primitive fury at the necessity of pain, and he forced himself to run. to drag his tortured body faster across the ice. Because Kiara is dying, because the dark cold wants me to stop. The ice-folk jammed and surged against the archway, in a panic hurry to take refuge far below in their many-leveled city. He raged at them, too.

They were part of the cold, part of the pain, because of them, Kiyara and Balin were dying. He sent the blade of force, lancing among them, his hatred rising full tide to join the hatred of Bon Cruciak that lodged in his mind. Stab and cut and slash with a long, terrible beam of brightness. They fell and fell, the hideous shining folk. And Stark sent the light of Bon Cruciutto.

's weapon, sweeping through the tower itself, through the openings that were like windows in the stone. Again and again, stabbing through those open slits as he ran, and suddenly the dark beam of force ceased to move. He tore out of it, and it did not follow him, remaining stationary as though fastened to the ice. The Battle of Forces left his flag. The pain was gone. He sped on to the tower. He was close now. The withered bodies lay in

heaps before the arch. The last of the ice-folk had forced their way inside. Holding the sword level like a lance, the Stark leaped in through the arch, into the tower. The shiny ones were dead where the destroying warmth had touched them. The flying spiral ribbons of ice were swept clean of them, the arching bridges and the galleries of that upper part of the tower. They were dead along the ledge under the control bank. They were dead across the mechanism that spun the frosty doom around Kiyara and Balin. The swirling disk still hummed.

Below, in that stupendous well, the crowding ice-folk made a seething pattern of color on the narrow ways, but Stark turned his back on them, and ran along the ledge, and in him was the heavy knowledge that he had come too late. The frost had thickened around Kiara and Balin. It encrusted them like stiffened lace, and now their flesh was overlaid with a diamond shell of ice. Surely they could not live. He raised the sword to smite down at the whirling disc,

to smash it, but there was no need. When the full force of that concentrated beam struck it, meeting the focus of shadow that it held, there was a violent flare of light and a shattering of crystal. The mechanism was silent. The glooming veil was gone from around the ice-shelled man and woman. Stark forgot the creatures in the shaft below him. He turned the blazing sword full upon Kiara and Balin.

It would not affect the thin covering of ice. If the woman and the man were dead, it would not affect their flesh any more than it had Bon Cruchak's. But if they lived, if there was still a spark, a flicker beneath that frozen male, the radiation would touch their blood with warmth, start again the pulse of life in their bodies. He waited, watching Kiara's face. It was still as marble,

and as white. Something, instinct, or the warning mind of Bon Cruishok that had learned a million years ago to beware the creatures of the ice, made him glance behind him. Stealthy, swift, and silent, up the winding ways they came. They had guessed that he had forgotten them in his anxiety. The sword was turned away from them now, and if they could take him from behind, stunned him with the chill force of the sceptre like rods they carried. He slashed them with the sword.

He saw the flickering beam go down and down the shaft, saw the bodies fall like drops of rain, rebounding here and there from the flying spans and carrying the living with them. He thought of the many levels of the city. He thought of all the countless thousands that must inhabit them. He could hold them all. in the shaft as long as he wished, if he had no other need for the sword, but he knew that

as soon as he turned his back they would be upon him again, and if he should once fall. He could not spare a moment or a chance. He looked at Kiara, not knowing what to do, and it seemed to him that the sheathing frost had melted just a little around her face. Desperately he struck down again at the creatures in the shaft, and then the answer came to him. He dropped the sword. The squat, round mechanism was beside him with its broken crystal wheel.

He picked it up. It was heavy. It would have been heavy for two men to lift, but Stark was a driven man. Grunting, swaying with the effort, he lifted it and let it fall out and down. Like a thunderbolt it struck among those slender bridges, the spider-web of icy strands that span the shaft. Stark watched it go, and listened to the brittle snapping of the ice, the final crashings of a million shards at the bottom far below.

He smiled, and turned again to Kiara, picking up the sword. It was hours later. Stark walked across the glowing ice of the valley to a while. the cairn. The sword of Bonn Crucocke hung at his side. He had taken the tailsman and replaced it in the boss, and he was himself again. Kiara and Balin walked beside him. The color had come back into their faces, but faintly, and they were still weak enough to be glad of Stark's hands to steady them. At the foot of the cairn they stopped, and Stark mounted it alone. He looked for a long moment into the face of Bon Crucoc, then he took the sword and carefully turned the rings

upon it so that the radiation spread out as it had before to close the gates of death. Almost reverently he replaced the sword in Bon Cruchak's hands. Then he turned and went down over the tumbled stones. The shimmering darkness brooded still over the day. distant tower. Underneath the ice, the Elfin City still spread downward. The shining ones would rebuild their bridges in the shaft and go on as they had before, dreaming their cold dreams of ancient power. But they would not go out through the gates of death. Bon Crucoc, in his rusty mail, was still Lord of the Pass, the warder of the Norlands. Stark said to the other,

Tell the story in Cushat. Tell it through the Norlands, the story of Bon Cushak, and why he guards the gates of death. Men have forgotten, and they should not forget. They went out of the valley then, the two men and the woman. They did not speak again, and the way out through the pass seemed endless. Some of Chiaris chieftains met them at the mouth of the pass above Cushat. They had waited there, ashamed to return to the city without her, but not daring to go back into the pass again. They had seen the creatures of the valley, and they were still afraid. They gave mounts to the three.

They themselves walked behind Kiara, and their heads were low with shame. They came into Kushat through the Riven Gate, and Stark went with Kiara to the King city where she made Balin follow too. Your sister is there, she said. I have had her cared for. The city was quiet, with the sullen apathy that follows after battle. The men of Mech cheered Kiara in the streets. She rode proudly, but Stork saw that her face was gaunt and strained.

He, too, was marked deep by what he had seen and done beyond the gates of death. They went up into the castle. Thannus took Balin into her arms and wept. She had lost her first wild fury, and she could look at Kiara now with a restrained hatred that had a tinge almost of admiration. "'You fought for Kushat,' she said unwillingly when she had heard the story. "'For that at least I can thank you.'

She went to Stark then and looked up at him. "'Cushat, my brother's life—' She kissed him and there were tears on her lips, but she turned to Kiara with a bitter smile. No one can hold him any more than the wind can be held. You will learn that. She went out then with Balin and left Stark and Kiara alone in the chambers of the king. Kiara said, The little one is very shrewd. She unbuckled the halberk and let it fall, standing slim in her. her tunic of black leather and walked to the tall windows that looked out upon the mountains.

She leaned her head wearily against the stone. An evil day! An evil deed! And now I have Cushat to govern with no reward of power from beyond the gates of death. How man can be misled!" Stark poured wine from the flagon and brought it to her. She looked at him over the rim of the cup with a certain rye amusement. The little one is shrewd, and she is right.

I don't know that I can be as wise as she. Will you stay with me, Stark, or will you go?" He did not answer at once, and she asked him, What hunger drives you, Stark? It is not conquest as it was with me. What are you looking for that you cannot find?" He thought back across the years, back to the beginning, to the boy Unchaka, who had once been happy with old one and little

Tika, in the blaze and thunder and bitter frosts of a valley in the twilight belt of mercury. He remembered how all that had ended under the guns of the miners, the men who were his own kind. He shook his head. I don't know. It doesn't matter. He took her between his two hands. feeling the strength and the splendor of her, and it felt oddly difficult to find words.

"'I want to stay, Kiara. Now this minute. I could promise that I would stay forever, but I know myself. You belong here. You will make Kushat your own. I don't. Someday I will go.' Kiyara nodded. my neck also was not made for chains and one country was too little to hold me very well stark let it be so she smiled and let the wine-cup fall end of chapter nine end of black amazon of mars by lee breckett