The fat shaman only groveled, hiding his face between fat hands from Tonguth’s wrath. The Chieftain spat contemptuously.
” ‘A gutless worm’ … apt, Barbarian,” the Goddess said, with a cryptic smile. “Abdekiel, as I said, you are no Drask. Where he was at least bold, strong and courageous, you are a weakling. Lust for power and conquest boils in your brain no less fiercely than in his. But where he reached out and took with fearless hands, caring not if blood be shed in the process, nor even if some of it be his own … your way is different. The poison in the chalice … the sly, whispered word … the insidious hints … lacking even the manhood of the dagger in the back from behind. Drask was a force of destruction, a thing to fear. You are utterly despicable!”
She reached out her mighty green arm.
“Become as Tonguth hailed you—a crawling worm! This is the judgment of Niamh… .”
The green ray of weird light sprang from her extended palm to bathe the huddled, moaning figure of the shaman.
There came a flash of blinding light.
When they blinked the dazzle from their eyes, the sprawling form of Abdekiel was gone … and, in its place, they saw a repulsive thing: the huge, glistening, bulging form of a giant worm flopped and writhed in sluggish torment, weaving its hideous blind head from side to side as if to seek escape, wallowing in the stinking slime its squalid flesh exhuded!
“Live, a human intellect, imprisoned in this loathsome slug! And now, begone—you foul my floors!”
Her great hand gestured, and the repulsive thing was wafted by invisible force through the air, vanishing into dimness, beyond Diomahl into the most distant forests of the Green World.
Now Tonguth stood alone in the place of judgment. All fear was shorn from him now—he was beyond horrors. He stood tall, shoulders thrown back, hands by his sides—yet not arrogantly, as had Drask, but quietly, waiting. And his face was calm, accepting whatever fate was decreed for him without protest or argument. Something there was of a certain nobility about the bearded Barbarian, unglimpsed until that moment.
She regarded him, from Her awful height.
“Tonguth var-Yordha, Chieftain of the Clan of Yordhanna.”
“Aye, Majesty,” Tonguth acknowledged. His tone was humble, but he did not bend his head.
“You are strong, hardy, bold. Bravery is yours, yes, and cruelty as well. Your hands are bloody with the gore of many hundreds. Your soul reeks with the stains of murder, rapine, pillage. But your cruelty is the honest cruelty of the savage, who knows no better. Your murders were done in battle, man to man or ship to ship. Your life is steeped in violence … but I have no quarrel with violence. War and death are a part of Nature. The strong batter down the weak, so that the race may breed true and clean. Crimes of excess are not yours. The lust for unlimited conquest and unending power that goaded the Warlord Drask to inhuman extents is not in you. In you I find a strong, crude and warlike manhood—but war, I say, is not of itself an evil thing, but a part of the universal process.”
Tonguth faced her unblinking, but doubt and puzzlement showed in his expression.
She smiled—nor was it Her coldly august smile as of before. This smile—did it hint at a trace of softer, more human warmth? Perhaps.
“Moreover, I find in you one high, redeeming and even noble trait. Unselfishly, with a devotion and a loyalty I could almost find within Myself to praise, did you serve him whom fate made your Master. Devotion misguided and ignorant—doglike—but still unselfish.”
Tonguth said slowly, “What does this mean, Lady?”
“It means I find but little evil in you. Go. You are free.”
Tonguth blinked, as one dazed, and turned a baffled look at Calastor, Lurn, and the Magister, who stared back at him blankly, but with a dawning trace of a smile. He turned again to the Goddess.
“No … punishment?”
She laughed, this time with only a touch of mockery. “Oh, yes, Barbarian. Punishment—of a kind. Tonguth of the Yordhanna, I bestow upon you Lordship over the Star Rovers, or what is left of them. You are their King—but not Warlord, for they and you are done now with conquest.”
He swung his great shaggy head, like a dazed bear. “I—am—King?” he repeated slowly.
“By my will. You will not find it to your own, I warrant. For now you must lead your broken people back to the Rim of the Galaxy from whence they sprang, ages agone. You shall guide them to their forgotten kingdoms, quell the disobedience in them, force them to tame again those cold and barren worlds as did their ancestors. Those worlds are yours and your descendants’ forever. Farm them. Build cities. And leave them never again!”
“Aye … aye, Lady, but … this is reward … kingship … not punishment!”
She regarded him with quiet amusement that softened the cold planes of Her unearthly face, infusing it for a moment with a very human warmth.
“Nay, Tonguth, for it is punishment of a very special and very cruel kind, as you shall discover in years to come! For now you must learn to lead, rather than being led. You must think … and plan for what is best … and command, where you have been commanded. While your people feast and enjoy their feasting, you shall stay awake night after night, in council-chamber and judgment-hall, puzzling out the baffling and enigmatic rules of justice, and mercy, and reason, and foresight, and … kingliness. This is your doom. This is the judgment of Niamh.”
“And I am … free to go?” he said thoughtfully, as if still not fully comprehending.
She nodded, rippling the floating veils of Her metallic mane.
“And take with you this gift,” She said, “this crystal statue of curiously lifelike design, the work of an Immortal Hand. Set it up in the center of your city. It is more than a work of art, my little friend. It shall stand, for your people and forever, a monument to the folly of cruel and limitless ambition … an indestructible symbol of the doom that awaits the conqueror. Treat it reverently, for it bears within it a human soul in unbelievable and unending torment. Look upon it daily … and remember the falling ships, the blasting beams, the proud cities crushed to gore-splashed rubble, the hordes of naked slaves led to the block or the arena of death. Do not hide it away, as the guilty man hides from the sting of conscience, but have it ever before your eyes. For this, too, is part of your … punishment.”
A globe of force snapped into existence, encompassing both Tonguth and the glassy thing that had been Drask the mighty Warlord. It floated up weightlessly from the shining pave … up into the green, shadowy dimness of the air that glowed with vague, submerged light … up, up into the astounding height of the Jade Tower … and was gone.
Calastor knew that it was sent on its mysterious way, flashing faster than light, faster than thought itself, through the unthinkable immensity of interstellar space, to join the shattered remnants of the Star Rover’s fleet … bearing within its sphere of force the crystal hell that imprisoned a tortured soul, and the mortal flesh that was a living man, and, perhaps, now somewhat more of a man … a man with a new-born conscience … a man learning the beginnings of the terrible responsibility each man bears for his brother man… .
A man at last beginning to think.
“And now, you three are left,” the Goddess’ cool voice broke in on his wondering thoughts. “Now we come to your judgment… .”