Their leader had been Norda, a thin genius with a mind as curious as a question. It was Norda who put the machine together, who directed that the people should live in walled city-states against the inroads of the vast numbers of barbaric Darksiders. In the machine Norda had stored power, endless quanta of it. That power gave the Klarnva their lights, their heat, their luxuries. They grew used to it. The Machine even furnished them with weapons, so far superior to those of the Darksiders that the latter looked on them with awe. When the Machine went dead twenty-five years ago, the city-states of the Klarnva went dead, too. There was no light, no heat. Gone were the power-driven vehicles, the entertaining-screens. People groped upward as from a fog, seeking the source of that power. They recalled that the Keeper of the Machine had disappeared around the same time as the Machine stopped. Moreover, the vast prism in the desert was smashed. Something from outer space had crushed it. All knew that there was a key to the Machine that would start it into motion. Many of them had tried to move it, from the Princess Gleya down to Flane. None of them were successful. "Neither was Vawdar," grated Flane, racing beneath a balcony, skidding on restless feet around a corner. There was clamour ahead of him. Hearing the hoarse cries of men fighting, the rasp of blades meeting and falling away, Flane went forward like the arrow from the bow. His blade was naked in the night, a length of glittering steel. He could see the Dragon Gates now: tall red blocks of stone hewn into the royal emblem of Klarn, red dragons, with real flame spurting from between their teeth to light the gateway below. In the crimson glare, men struggled. As Flane shot into the mass of men, he saw Vawdar, bound at wrist and ankle, leaning against the wall of a building. "For Gleya!" snarled Flane, and ran his blade through a _meknik's_ heart. Now the hands of men were all around him, and their shoulders, smelly with sweat. He heard curses rasped in his ears, caught the glitter of a dagger raised to smite. Flane went in low on steel-thewed legs, lurched a shoulder to catch a _meknik_ off balance and send him reeling into others with the keen edge of Flane's sword across his throat, severing his jugular vein. The sword in his hand sang a strident song as it slithered around steel and drank from the heart of men. The blade danced and leaped. The best steel in Klarn was in that sword, and the finest hand for a hilt was wielding it. The _mekniks_ gave stubbornly, but the dripping point that sprang out of the night for throat and chest would not be denied. [Illustration: _In the crimson glare, Flane's sword sang a strident song as it slithered around steel and drank from the heart of men._] Flane sliced a dagger across Vawdar's bonds, heard his swift, "They fight with strangers whom I do not know. Be swift, Flane, that we may escape!"