Back beyond the pink-and-gold structure with the bloodstained spikes, five figures had appeared in the street. Three of them held longish tubes with globed ends that might be weapons. They were very tall, these figures, towering over the people of Kushat, towering even over Stark, but they were excessively slender and they moved with swaying motion like reeds before the wind. They were dressed in an assortment of bright-colored garments and queer tall caps that exaggerated their elongated narrow skulls. Their skin was a pale golden color, stretched tight over a structure of facial bones that seemed to be all brow and jaw with little in between but two great round eyes like dark moons.
They did not speak. They only stood and held the weapons and stared at the people of Kushat.
Thanis caught her breath in a little cry. Stark looked around.
Six thin tall creatures fluttering in rainbow silks moved out to stand across the way. Four of them held tubes.
One of them spoke. His voice was a kind of high-pitched fluting, quite musical, like the call of some strange bird. The talisman brought the meaning of the sounds clearly to Stark.
“Our weapons are invincible. We can destroy you all. Ban Cruach protects us! His promise and his talisman!”
There was a moment’s pause, a moment that seemed a hundred years long to Stark as he stared in astonishment.
Then he shouted, “Ban Cruach!”
He walked toward them, holding out the talisman.
XIV
The name crashed in metallic echoes from the surrounding walls. The creatures started back, swaying this way and that, and their huge eyes fixed on the talisman. Now that he was closer, Stark could see the vestigial noses and the small mouths, reptilian in their neatness of tight lips and little even teeth.
“Ban Cruach,” he said again.
They swayed and fluted among themselves. The talisman glowed between Stark’s hands. Their thought-voices clamored in his head.
“He has the Word of Power!”
“The talisman! He holds the talisman…”
“What are these creatures? What do they want here?”
“They have his form. Perhaps they’re his people.” The same thought was suddenly arrived at and projected by several of them together, and it was full of fear. “They’ve come to take him away from us!”
“No!” said Stark. He made gestures of negation, having no idea whether they would understand. They stopped fluting and stared at him. He came closer, close enough to be aware of their bodies as living things, breathing, stirring, smelling oddly of a dry dusty perfume like the odor of fallen leaves. They horrified him, not because of their physical difference but because he had eavesdropped on their unguarded conversations and knew at least a fraction of the things these bodies were capable of doing. The creature who had first mentioned Ban Cruach was ornamented with streamers of blue and green, attached to his arms and legs and around his body with no possible function other than ornamentation. His conical cap was pink. Stark set his teeth on his rising gorge and approached him. He indicated that he should touch the talisman.
He did, with four long golden fingers and a thumb like a gamecock’s spur, tipped with an artificial talon of razor-sharp steel.
“Do you understand me now?” Stark asked aloud.
The dark moon eyes regarded him, alert and frighteningly clever but without comprehension.
“What is it trying to do?” said one of the aliens. This one wore a green cap, a long strip of coral down the front, and a set of amethyst-blue streamers that went down the back and then on down both legs, where they were fastened to the ankles by jeweled bands. Stark realized all of a sudden that this was a female. There was remarkably little difference. She swayed her thin gold body with a strange angular grace, her arms moving like a dancer’s, expressing fear.
“Kill him,” said a third one, dressed in russet and brown. “Drive your spur in, Hrillin. Take away their power…”
Stark stepped back abruptly, with the talisman, and half drew his sword. The one called Hrillin looked at him with a sudden blaze of understanding.
“Now I see! When we speak, you hear us, through the talisman.” His long arms were motioning his fellows to silence, warning them. “If this is so, raise your hand three times.”
Stark obeyed.
“Ah,” said Hrillin. He stared at Stark, and stared, and then he laughed. “And is this the true nature of the talisman?”
Complete amazement, echoed by the others. More than amazement. Consternation. And the female in coral and amethyst-blue fluted on a shrill note of panic.
“But if that is true…”
“We shall see,” said Hrillin, smoothly shutting her off. “It is certain he understands what we say.”
“His talisman speaks for us,” said another, this one enveloped in a great swirl of flame-colored silk that hid him completely from neck to heels. “Perhaps our talisman will speak for him.”
Well, and of course, thought Stark. One tuned to their wave-output, one to ours, because the two systems are not compatible. I should have realized that. Otherwise I would have picked up all the human chatter around me as well.
Hrillin was watching him. He raised his hand again, three times.
Hrillin beckoned. “Come then.”
Stark beckoned in his turn, to Balin and the others.
“No,” said Hrillin. “Only you. Let the others rest.”
Stark shook his head. He smiled mockingly and made certain motions, remembering one or two of the things he had learned from the talisman during the time that he listened to the voices of the city.
Hrillin and some of the others laughed. It was a sound as musical as falling water, but Stark did not find it at all pleasant. They turned and moved up the broad street with their swaying, capering steps. Hrillin called to his fellows down the street to let the others come.
“Remember,” he said to Stark. “We can destroy you all, in one second, if we wish.”
Stark raised his hand, saying yes. But to Balin he said, “Maybe.” He explained what Hrillin had said. “It’s possible. Pass the word down to stay together. No panic, and no provocations. But there’s something wrong here. They’re frightened.”
The thin gold woman tossed her arms like the branches of a wind-torn tree, pantomiming destruction.
They moved in a long line down the avenue. Stark repeated what had been said, so that Balin and the others would know.
“Ban Cruach protects them?” said Balin. “They have a talisman?” He seemed unable to believe this. So did Thanis, and those others like Lugh who were close enough to hear. Only Ciaran said, “Ban Cruach appears to have been a generous man. Let us hope that he keeps his promises—all of them.”
Stark warned them to silence when the aliens should hold their talisman.
It was growing dark. In the shadowy cross-streets and the squares along the way, more and more of the thin tall figures gathered, circling, following, watching. All at once, all over the city, lights sprang on.
Thanis gasped, and then whispered, “How can anything so hateful be so beautiful?”
The streets were filled now with a soft radiance of color. The tall thin shapes in their fluttering silks moved through pools of gold and green, blue and violet, orange and blood-red. All the windows of the buildings showed a clear silver-white against the colors. Rank after rank they passed by, giving a million narrow glimpses into public halls with many slender pillars, and the odd-shaped rooms of houses, all deserted.
Stark listened to the fluting calls of the creatures who followed.
“There are not many of them,” he said quietly. “I think not as many as we. They seem to have no real leader. Hrillin happened to be the first to see us, so that apparently entitles him to lead for this…” He hesitated. “ ‘Game’ is the only word.” The wild disorder of their talk was appalling. “Their whole existence here seems to be one great anarchic game. They murder for fun. Not simple murders. They do all kinds of things for fun, and physical torture is one of the least of them. They’ve had thousands of years to invent perversions.”