"Burn you down--?" He repeated the blue man's words as if he liked their flavor. "No, no, you _starbo_. I'd not do that. Not now; not ever. It's far too quick a way for you to die." "You'll do your worst, so do as you like." Haral forced himself to shrug despite the pain. Sark smirked. "Of course. But first there's another task we must attend." "Another task--?" "Yes, now that you two have opened up the way." Sark chuckled, deep in his throat. His fat-rimmed eyes gleamed like tiny, vicious stars. "We go now to waken the living goddess, Xaymar, queen of storms, so that she can deliver her secret into my hands!" CHAPTER V There lay the woman! Xaymar. Woman and death, the end of a madman's quest. The great crystal globe that cased her rested atop a dais in the center of an echoing, high-roofed chamber. Pulsing, aglow with strange life, its radiance fought back the crypt's impinging gloom. Haral swayed for a moment under the impact of the sight, his wounds forgotten. Excitement raced through him. But Sark's men held him by either arm, and others penned him in front and behind, and Sark himself sat in the riding-chair mere feet away, his hand never straying from the cymosynthesizer switch. And there was Kyla, pale and forlorn, in a Thorian's tentacled grasp. The end of a quest, indeed. The bitter end. Sickness came to Haral. Yet because he was the man he was, such a mood could not last long even here, even now. Thoughtfully, he gazed about--taking in the vaulted roof; the walls, honeycombed with coleopteran burrows; the expressions with which Sark's mongrel crewmen tried to mask their awe. Above all, he looked upon the woman. Sark's eyes, too, were gleaming. Drawn as by some mighty lodestone, he sent his riding-chair scudding forward to the dais on which the globe encasing the sleeping goddess rested. His web-fingered hand reached out to touch the crystal. Then, abruptly, he halted. Slowly, he withdrew his hand and wheeled the chair about. His eyes sought Haral, and his lips parted in a leer. He said: "Ulna has little love for strangers, _chitza_." Haral said nothing. "Perhaps they thought to trap a few with this pretty bauble," the raider chief remarked. His smile was sinister. "Perhaps Namboina told the things he told too easily, in order that he might laugh in hell because I, too, had died." Haral shrugged. "You talk in circles, _starbo_." "You came here seeking to waken Xaymar, did you not?" Sark smirked. "I merely meant that you should have the chance to do it." His smile vanished. His words crackled: "Go to the dais, _chitza_! Awaken Xaymar!" Haral's captors shoved him forward. Numbly, he clumped across the floor. * * * * * Sark and his men drew back to the protection of the archway. Kyla stood in the shadows, pressed against a wall.