"I warned you, Stark!" said Kynon furiously. "I warned you." Men were bending over Luhar. Knighton, Walsh, Themis, Arrod. Stark saw that Delgaun was among them. He did not question at the time how word had gone back to Valkis and sent Delgaun racing across the dead sea bottom with his hired bravoes to search for the red-haired woman. It was right that Delgaun should be there. In short ragged sentences, Stark told how Luhar and Freka had tried to kill him, and how Berild had been lost with him. Kynon turned to the Venusian. Death was already glazing the cloud-grey eyes, but it had not quenched the hatred and the venom. "He lies," whispered Luhar. "I saw him--he tried to run away and take the woman with him." Luhar of Venus, taking vengeance with his last breath. Freka pushed forward, transparently eager to pick up his cue. "It is so," he said. "I was with Luhar. I saw it also." Delgaun laughed. Cruel, silent laughter. He stood up, and looked at Berild. Berild's eyes were blazing. She ignored Delgaun and spoke to Kynon. "You fool. Can't you see that they hate him? What Stark says is true. And I would have died in the desert because of them, if Stark hadn't been a better man than all of you." "Strange words," said Delgaun, "coming from a man's own mate. Perhaps Luhar did lie, after all. Perhaps it was not Stark who tried to run away, but you." She cursed him, with an ancient curse, and Kynon looked at her sullenly. He said to the men who held Stark, "Chain him below, in the dungeons." Then he took Berild's arm and went with her into the palace. Stark fought until someone behind him knocked him on the head with the butt of a spear. The last thing he saw was the face of Fianna, standing out from the crowd, wide-eyed with pity and love. He came to in a place of cold, dry stone. There was an iron collar around his neck, and a five-foot chain ran from it to a ring in the wall. The cell was small. A gate of iron bars closed the single entrance. Beyond was an open well, with other cell doors around it, and above were thick stone gratings open to the sky. He guessed that the place was built beneath some inner court of the palace. There were no other prisoners. But there was a guard, a thick-shouldered barbarian who sat on the execution block in the center of the well, with a sword and a jug of wine. A guard who watched the captive Stark smiled. Freka. When he saw that Stark was awake, Freka lifted up the jug and laughed. "Here's to Death," he said. "For no one else comes here!" He drank, and after that he did not speak, only sat and smiled. Stark said nothing either. He waited, with the same unhuman patience he had shown when he waited for his captors under the tor. The dim daylight faded from the gratings. Darkness came, and the pale glimmer of the moons. Freka became a silvered statue of a man, sitting on the block. Stark's eyes glowed.