The very rocks of the palace misted and swirled under that awesome clutching. White fire flared and seared, and where it touched, all matter was destroyed! The walls of the palace shook and quivered. Beams groaned under the sudden stress. Where the guardroom had been, was empty nothingness! In a flame that lapped him protectingly as it flared fiercely and strongly at Noorlythin himself, the Doyen carried both men upward. So swift was their transmission through normal space that in one blinding surge of the white flame, the McCanahan found himself between the worlds, in some lost, dark blotch of empty space. "No Doyen may slay another Doyen!" That voice rang triumphantly in the abyss. "There is a way, Noorlythin! That is why we have let you work your will on this man. He hates you with a deadly hate, Noorlythin. You put him in your worlds of subspace, and you abandoned him to the creatures of your own creation!" "Aie! I abandoned him! Were it not for him and his harp, I would reign as a god on every planet in all inhabited space. The Solar Combine would have fallen to my sfarran battle fleet!" "You dared not move before you knew the one weapon that might defeat you!" "Now I know! Now! Now!" The radiant energy in the thing that was Noorlythin was awful. It beat and flared redly through the whiteness. The McCanahan shuddered as its heat beat out at him, chilling even as it seared. _Courage, Terran! Courage for what lies ahead!_ And now the voices shrank and whispered, piping like elfin horns within his head, that none but he could hear. _Through you, we may destroy him! Courage! With your help, he dies--forever!_ He knew what he had to do. Of his free will he had to offer himself to Noorlythin! Of his free will, he had to fling himself into the mad embrace of those pulsing tendrils, that had turned Lunol the peddler to black and drifting dust! _He gave you to the Eye of Lirflane! He gave you to the cat-woman and her whip!_ The McCanahan snarled. "Destroy him, and I save the Solar Combine! I hear you, Doyen. I hear and I--obey!" And Kael McCanahan flung himself headlong, forward into the white whirlwind of force that was Noorlythin. * * * * * In the Chamber of Living Death, she who had been Slyss of Aakan quivered fitfully. A bubble of froth broke from her red lips. She moaned and stirred. A hand lifted, struggled feebly, fell back to her side, limp and waxen. Slyss opened brown eyes. She lay silent, staring upward at the ceiling. A sob fought its way upward from her throat. "Noorlythin is dead! His control over me and the others--gone forever!" She rolled off the dais and stared around her, at the dead bodies. She shivered. She went to the doors and pulled them open. In the distance, she could hear the frightened roaring of terrified men. She began to run. Flaith shook the bars of the cell that held her. Her red hair made a living flame about her shoulders.