In the red, seething furnace of his brain, Shangkar knew only that this was the tantalizing phantom whose mysterious spell had broken his spirit. He remembered the shadowy terrors of that awful night, and the bitter humiliations he had suffered through Calastor’s magic … how he had wept like a halfwitted child, and vomited his guts empty because of whispering shadows … and now his burning mind held only one wish: to hack to bloody ruin the laughing, mocking author of his humiliation.
He hurled himself at Calastor, howling with fury. From his belt he tore a long-handled double-bladed axe, tied to his wrist with a leathern thong. As he whirled it around his head the blade sang as it clove thin air.
Calastor was unarmed. But Lurn seized up a sword one of the fallen Rover chiefs had let fall and threw it towards him.
“Calastor-!”
He snatched it from the air, just in time to face Shangkar’s attack.
The axe grazed the upturned flat of Calastor’s blade and glanced away, ringing. But the impact of the blow drove Calastor to his knees. In a flash, Shangkar was upon him, axe raised above his helmed head, eyes flaring catlike with fury, blade whistling down to shatter the White Wizard’s skull.
One of Calastor’s booted legs shot out, thudding against Shungkar’s leg as the Barbarian straddled his prone figure. The warrior tumbled to one side, his whistling axe narrowly missing Calastor’s yellow thatch, clanging as it drove into the deck-plate.
Then Calastor sprang lithely to his feet. Panting, the two faced each other. They circled warily, cat-crimson eyes burning into keen eyes of cool gray. Then steel met—rebounded—met again, in a ringing iron music. Shangkar fought with great, smashing blows, the full, tigerish strength of his steely thews hurled into each blow. Calastor’s sword was thin but strong—made for nimble fencing, not for warding off axe-blows. If he met the full weight of the axe squarely it would shatter his blade into splinters of flying steel. So he fought to turn the axe with deft, adroit, glancing counter-blows that demanded his full attention.
He was blind and deaf to the maelstrom of screaming men that surged about him, as the shaggy Rovers fought against the immaterial magic of the Sages. For Calastor, the limits of the Universe had shrunk into a circle a few yards wide—bounded by the glittering wheel of Shangkar’s whirling axe. Again and again the furious, full-bodied strength of the Rover’s hammer-blows drove him to his knees, or forced him staggering back. For long, long moments of the duel he fought only on the defensive, struggling to hold his own. Curiously quixotic, it never occurred to him to use his magic mind-powers against the snarling, spitting warrior. This was man against man, steel-thewed body against body, keen steel against steel—a ritual older than civilization itself.
Then the tide turned. With a dancer’s supple grace, Calastor swayed back to elude one of Shangkar’s ferocious swinging blows—and while the snarling warrior was off-balance, the White Wizard’s blade snaked in and drew a red furrow along Shangkar’s shoulder.
“Stand still and fight like a man,” Shangkar spat, aiming another smashing sweep at the Wizard’s yellow head. But either fatigue was dulling the sharp edge of his speed, or the dripping shoulder-wound was eroding his timing, for Calastor again eluding the whistling blow—and etched a crimson gash across the warrior’s naked, heaving chest.
The next darting stroke of the slim sword laid open the tanned skin of Shangkar’s brow.
He swung the great axe again and again. Sometimes it was met and turned by an adroit, grazing blow of Calastor’s sword, in a hissing shower of sparks. And sometimes the lithe Wizard dodged the blow, striking with his steel fang at Shangkar’s unprotected cheek, or belly, or arm. Ere long the great brown tiger-body was smeared with gore. None of the wounds were crippling, but they were indeed painful, driving a hot needle of agony into Shangkar’s brain each time he strove with the axe. With every flex of straining muscles, the wounds tore open a bit more.
And he was tiring now. Sweat shone over his rippling arms and panting chest. And the blood from his slashed brow was dribbling blindingly into his eyes, blurring his vision. Somewhere deep within the seething chaos of his brain, Shangkar recalled a sun-drenched scene in the great arena of Argion City—a nude, heroic Argionid swordsman pitted against a giant thard—and how Shangkar, secure on the stone benches, had laughed as blood from a scratched brow had blinded the hero and brought him to an inevitable doom—
The end came suddenly.
Staggering off-balance, Shangkar swung suddenly with every screaming atom of his strength. The massive axe came down fully on a lifted blade—and Calastor’s sword shattered into glittering fragments, leaving only the handle and a long shard of broken blade in his hand.
Shangkar grinned, a feline baring of teeth.
“Now—”
Calastor, instead of springing back—sprang forward, closing with the giant form of the bloody warrior. And, for that one, fatal split second, Shangkar’s blurred vision failed him.
Calastor, with all his strength, drove the needle-sharp shard of his broken sword home, sheathing it in Shangkar’s heart.
For a long, gasping instant the Barbarian stared down at the sword’s cross-hilt, protruding from his breast. He plucked at it numbly, strength draining from his hands. Forgotten, the axe thudded to the deck. Then he opened his mouth to say something—whether curse or prayer none ever knew. But instead of words, a gout of scarlet blood issued from his lips. Eyes glazing, the dead man fell face-forward to the bloody deck.
“Move, Wizard, and she dies.”
The duel had seemed endless, but had only occupied a few minutes of time. And in that brief span, as Calastor had fought with Shangkar and the Sages had warred mentally against the Rovers, the Warlord had not failed to take advantage of these distractions. He had moved like a striking snake, seizing Lurn as she stood to one side, watching with frightened eyes and parted lips the duel of Wizard and warrior.
Drask’s iron arms had closed about the girl, holding her against his body, one hand suspending a dagger against her white throat. Now, protected by his living shield, Drask grinned with cold, ironic humor at Calastor.
“Tell your people to surrender,” he snarled, “or the girl dies. Fast— I’ll tear out her throat before your eyes if you don’t obey!”
Exhausted by the duel, numbed by Lurn’s peril, Calastor’s mind whirled, thinking furiously. Then—
“AIEEEEEEE!”
The full-throated terror in the cry arrested all attention. Staggering to his feet, Tonguth leveled a trembling finger at the mighty screen above their heads. All turned, to behold a sight beyond all thought or imagination.
Stupendous, dwarfing the stars, the Green Goddess looked down at them from space.
Millions of miles long, the body of the Green Woman floated in the void. Her form was that of a superbly beautiful woman, human save that Her flesh was like green jade. Her full-breasted, long-legged body was the epitome of incredible grace and beauty. From throat to heel, Her inconceivably vast body was swathed in drifting veils of emerald gauze … weightless draperies, vast as a nebula, that drifted in a cloud of dim emerald mist about Her. Her face was inhumanly godlike, eyes of dark emerald fire beneath level brows, the classic features of a sculptor’s dream of divinity. Her hair floated about Her mask-like face in a halo of emerald smoke, long coils of glittering green hair unfolding about Her like the tresses of a Medusa … a web of green magic, sparkling with a thousand minute points of light, as if half a galaxy of stars were caught in the floating haze of Her mane.