People of the Talisman The Secret of Sinharat by Leigh Brackett

Author:Leigh Brackett
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Ace Books
Published: 2015-04-27T04:00:00+00:00

XV

THE LIGHTS were on again.

He lay in a pool of light. The pool was deep orange, a suffocating color, very rasping to the nerves. Things moved in it, tall things that pranced and fluttered, trailing bright streamers.

“He’s awake,” they said.

The talisman lay on his breast, between his crossed hands.

“See?” they said. “His eyes are open ”

He sat up convulsively, his brain still unsteady from the drug. He was naked and unarmed. Only the talisman was left. He looked up at them and hated them, futilely, and feared them with a cold sick fear. His body had tiny cuts all over it that stung and pulled when he moved.

Hrillin came and bent above him, holding the other talisman. “You lost Kushat,” he said, and Stark knew that Hrillin was referring not to him alone but to all the humans. “You lost Kushat and so the world rolls in on us.” He raked himself with his free hand and blood ran down his narrow chest. His eyes burned. He twitched and swayed with a lunatic joy. “Do you feel the greatness of this time? Here we end. All the long, long ages, piled and gathered, and we bear them into the dark.”

The figures behind him danced stiffly, fluting wild cries without words.

Stark said, “But you gave us the weapons ”

“The weapons!” Hrillin whirled and took from one of his fellows a tube, perhaps the same one Stark had been carrying. He pointed the globed end at Stark and pressed the firing stud. He pressed it and pressed it, laughing.

“I said these would kill more than you thought! Not enemies. Hopes, and dreams, and faith, but not enemies.” He ceased to press the stud and held the weapon upright like a club. “Ban Cruach promised you power. We have no power. The city warms us and lights us and gives us food and drink because it was built to do so, but beyond that we have nothing. All else is dead, worn out, corroded, crumbled, useless. Now the city ends, and that is the end of everything. The end of the promise ”

He brought his two hands together, striking the useless weapon hard against the talisman, and the talisman shattered and fell.

“The end!” cried Hrillin. “This is our night of carnival. We dance toward oblivion, laughing, shouting the name of Ban Cruach!”

He struck the talisman out of Stark’s hands and broke it, and the contact was gone. Forever.

They swooped on him in the orange light, in a swaying semi-circle, and began to prick him with their spurs. And as Hrillin had said, they were laughing.

Stark ran.

He fled along the colored streets. They had brought him to a part of the city that was strange to him, away from the avenue. The great stone tower rose high above the roofs in one direction, and in the other, toward the perimeter of the city, he thought the lights chopped off short, as though the aliens had left a barrier of darkness against the people of Kushat.

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