"Yes. Already she's on her way there." A fiend would have envied Xaymar's smile. "That was why the coleopteron was wailing for me at the shaft below here. He sought my last decision--and I said, 'Yes. Good riddance. Let Sark have her.'" Through a scarlet haze, Haral cried out, "Curse you, Xaymar!" He was moving forward in the same instant, lashing out at her, and he saw her mouth go slack with shock at his sudden onslaught. Then his fist hammered home on her jaw: The force of it lifted her and slammed her back across the bubble, to land in a heap on the floor, crumpled and unconscious. Then the haze cleared. Numbly, Haral stared down at her. Why had he done it? What did he care whether Sark got Kyla? He'd meant it when he said she'd given him naught but trouble. His destiny lay here--here, with Xaymar, queen of storms; here, with the secrets that would give him the power to carve out his dream empire. This other was sheer madness--without sense or logic; without even volition. Yet he'd done it. And now--? Already, out there in the green-grey-purple Ulnese mountains, a slim _Shamon_ girl was being dragged to a monster. Almost without thinking, he looked to his armor. He was half-way down the slope to his _hwalon_ before it dawned on him that, with Xaymar unconscious and at his mercy, he'd still forgotten even to look beneath her veil. CHAPTER VII Bleakly, Haral looked down on the knot of coleoptera moving through the valley below. There could be no mistake. This was the party. Even from here, sitting his _hwalon_ high amid the barren crags above them, he could glimpse the shimmering gold of the captive Kyla's hair. He pondered. Nearly a dozen of the giant beetles were in the party, guarding the girl on all sides. Further, considering their mastery of mind-to-mind communication, it seemed impossible that they had not heard by now of his escape and mission. Almost affectionately, he touched his own worn helmet. With it to insulate his brain, at least he had little to fear from the weird mind control that was their deadliest weapon. As for the odds, what real difference did it make whether they were a dozen to one against him, or a hundred? From any angle, his course was madness, and no calculation could make it otherwise. He'd thrown out logic when he struck Xaymar down and blasted the two beetles on guard over his _hwalon_. Now his fate lay with the gods of the void and his own right arm. Laughing harshly, he wheeled the dragon. Then, light-lance raised and ready, he moved on down the rock-strewn defile for a closer survey of the situation. When he came out of the gorge, he'd quartered the distance between him and his quarry. Thoughtful, narrow-eyed, he studied the group in more detail from the cover of a boulder.