"He gave no reason, when he spoke to the man from Venus. But perhaps I can guess. He knows that you're as strong as he is, and so he fears you. Also, the Lady Berild looked at you in a certain way." "I thought Berild was Kynon's woman." "Perhaps she is--for the time," answered Fianna enigmatically. Then she shook her head, glancing around with what was almost fear. "I have risked much already. Please--don't let it be known that I've spoken to you, beyond what I was sent to say." Her eyes pleaded with him, and Stark realized with a shock that Fianna, too, stood on the edge of a quicksand. "Don't be afraid," he said, and meant it. "We'd better go." She swung her beast around, and as she did so she whispered, "Be careful, Eric John Stark!" Stark nodded. He rode behind her, thinking that he liked the sound of his name on her lips. * * * * * The Lady Berild lay among her furs and cushions, and even then there was no indolence about her. She was relaxed as a cat is, perfectly at ease and yet vibrant with life. In the shadows of the litter her skin showed silver-white and her loosened hair was a sweet darkness. "Are you stubborn, wild man?" she asked. "Or do you find me distasteful?" He had not realized before how rich and soft her voice was. He looked down at the magnificent supple length of her, and said, "I find you most damnably attractive--and that's why I'm stubborn." "Afraid?" "I'm taking Kynon's pay. Should I take his woman also?" She laughed, half scornfully. "Kynon's ambitions leave no room for me. We have an agreement, because a king must have a queen--and he finds my counsel useful. You see, I am ambitious, too! Apart from that, there is nothing." Stark looked at her, trying to read her smoke-grey eyes in the gloom. "And Delgaun?" "He wants me, but...." She hesitated, and then went on, in a tone quite different from before, her voice low and throbbing with a secret pleasure as vast and elemental as the star-shot sky. "I belong to no one," she said. "I am my own." Stark knew that for the moment she had forgotten him. He rode for a time in silence, and then he said slowly, repeating Delgaun's words, "Perhaps you have forgotten something, Berild. There is nothing for you in me, the creature of an hour." He saw her start, and for a moment her eyes blazed and her breath was sharply drawn. Then she laughed, and said, "The wild man is also a parrot. And an hour can be a long time--as long as eternity, if one wills it so." "Yes," said Stark, "I have often thought so, waiting for death to come at me out of a crevice in the rocks. The great lizard stings, and his bite is fatal." He leaned over in the saddle, his shoulders looming above hers, naked in the biting wind. "My hours with women are short ones," he said. "They come after the battle, when there is time for such things. Perhaps then I'll come and see you."