“Aye.” They acknowledged Carse with grave courtesy.
The Earthman said, “Jaxart has told me that all who fight Sark may have freedom of Khondor. I claim that right.”
“We will carry word to Rold, who heads the council of the Sea Kings.”
The Khonds on deck began to shout their own messages then, the eager words of men who have been a long time away from home. The Sky Men answered in their clear sweet voices and presently darted away, their opinions beating up into the blue air, higher and higher, growing tiny in the distance.
Lorn remained standing in the bow, watching until there was nothing left but empty sky.
“We’ll raise Khondor soon,” said Jaxart and Carse turned to speak to him. Then some instinct made him look back, and he saw that Lorn was gone.
There was no sign of him in the water. He had gone overside without a sound and he must have sunk like a drowning bird, pulled down by the weight of his useless wings.
Jaxart growled, “It was his will and better so.” He cursed the Sarks and Carse smiled an ugly smile.
“Take heart,” he said, “we may thrash them yet. How is it that Khondor has held out when Jekkara and Valkis fell?”
“Because not even the scientific weapons of the Sarks’ evil allies, the Dhuvians, can touch us there. You’ll understand why when you see Khondor.”
Before noon they sighted land, a rocky and forbidding coast. The cliffs rose sheer out of the sea and behind them forested mountains towered like a giant’s wall. Here and there a narrow fiord sheltered a fishing village and an occasional lonely steading clung to the high pasture land, a collar of white flame along the cliffs.
Carse sent Boghaz to the cabin for Ywain. She had remained there under guard and he had not seen her since the mutiny—except once.
It had been the first night after the mutiny. He had with Boghaz and Jaxart been examining the strange instruments that they had found in the inner cabin of the Dhuvian.
“These are Dhuvian weapons that only they know how to use,” Boghaz had declared. “Now we know why Ywain had no escort ship. She needed none with a Dhuvian and his weapons aboard her galley.”
Jaxart looked at the things with loathing and fear. “Science of the accursed Serpent! We should throw them after his body.”
“No,” Carse said, examining the things. “If it were possible to discover the way in which these devices operate—”
He had soon found that it would not be possible without prolonged study. He knew science fairly well, yes. But it was the science of his own different world.
These instruments had been built out of a scientific knowledge alien in nearly every way to his own. The science of Rhiannon, of which these Dhuvian weapons represented but a small part!
Carse should recognize the little hypnosis machine that the Dhuvian had used upon him in the dark. A little metal wheel set with crystal stars, that revolved by a slight pressure of the fingers. And when he set it turning it whispered a singing note that so chilled his blood with memory that he hastily set the thing down.
The other Dhuvian instruments were even more incomprehensible. One consisted of a large lens surrounded by oddly asymmetrical crystal prisms. Another had a heavy metal base in which flat metal vibrations were mounted. He could only guess that these weapons exploited the laws of alien and subtle optical and sonic sciences.
“No man can understand the Dhuvian science,” muttered Jaxart. “Not even the Sarks, who have alliance with the Serpent.”
He stared at the instruments with the half-superstitious hatred of a nonscientific folk for mechanical purposes.
“But perhaps Ywain, who is daughter of Sark’s king, might know,” Carse speculated. “It’s worth trying.”
He went to the cabin where she was being guarded with that purpose in mind. Ywain sat there and she wore now the shackles he had worn.
He came in upon her suddenly, catching her as she sat with her head bowed and her shoulders bent in utter weariness. But at the sound of the door she straightened and watched him, level-eyed. He saw how white her face was and how the shadow lay in the hollows of the bones.
He did not speak for a long time. He had no pity for her. He looked at her, liking the taste of victory, liking the thought that he could do what he wanted with her.
When he asked her about the Dhuvian scientific weapons they had found Ywain laughed mirthlessly.
“You must be an ignorant barbarian indeed if you think the Dhuvians would instruct even me in their science. One of them came with me to overawe with those things the Jekkaran ruler, who was waxing rebellious. But S’San would not let me even touch those things.”
Carse believed her. It accorded with what Jaxart had said, that the Dhuvians jealously guarded their scientific weapons from even their allies, the Sarks.
“Besides,” Ywain said mockingly, “why should Dhuvian science interest you if you hold the key to the far greater science locked in Rhiannon’s tomb?”
“I do hold that key and that secret,” Carse told her and his answer took the mockery out of her face.
“What are you going to do with it?” she asked.
“On that,” Carse said grimly, “my mind is clear. Whatever power that tomb gives me I’ll use against Sark and Caer Dhu—and I hope it’s enough to destroy you down to the last stone in your city!”
Ywain nodded. “Well answered. And now—what about me? Will you have me flogged and chained to an oar? Or will you kill me here?”
He shook his head slowly, answering her last question. “I could have let my wolves tear you if I had wished you killed now.”
Her teeth showed briefly in what might have been a smile. “Small satisfaction in that. Not like doing it with one’s own hands.”
“I might have done that too, here in the cabin.”
“And you tried, yet did not. Well then—what?” Carse did not answer. It came to him that, whatever he might do to her, she would still mock him to the very end. There was the steel of pride in this woman.
He had marked her though. The gash on her cheek would heal and fade but never vanish. She would never forget him as long as she lived. He was glad he had marked her.
“No answer?” she mocked. “You’re full of indecision for a conqueror.”
Carse went around the table to her with a pantherish step. He still did not answer because he did not know. He only knew that he hated her as he had never hated anything in his life before. He bent over her, his face dead white, his hands open and hungry.
She reached up swiftly and found his throat. Her fingers were as strong as steel and the nails bit deep.
He caught her wrists and bent them away, the muscles of his arms standing out like ropes against her strength. She strove against him in silent fury and then suddenly she broke. Her lips parted as she strained for breath, and Carse suddenly set his own lips against them.
There was no love, no tenderness in that kiss. It was a gesture of male contempt, brutal and full of hate. Yet for one strange moment then her sharp teeth had met in his lower lip and his mouth was full of blood and she was laughing.
“You barbarian swine,” she whispered. “Now my brand is on you.”
He stood looking at her. Then he reached out and caught her by the shoulders and the chair went over with a crash.
“Go ahead,” she said, “If it pleases you.”
He wanted to break her between his two hands. He wanted…
He thrust her from him and went out and he had not passed the door since.
Now he fingered the new scar on his lip and watched her come onto the deck with Boghaz. She stood very straight in her jeweled hauberk but the lines around her mouth were deeper and her eyes, for all their bitter pride, were somber.