Bride of the Dark One Read online

and he saw them together, laughing at him: theEarthman-captain and the woman who had been Ransome's.

  "Captain Jareth," Ransome said slowly. "Here--on Yaroto."

  The Venusian nodded, pushing the bottle toward Ransome. The Earthmanignored the gesture.

  "Is the woman with him?"

  Mytor smiled his feline smile. "You would like to see her blood rununder the knives of the priests, no?"

  "No."

  Ransome meant it. Somewhere, in the years of flight, he had lost hislove for the blonde, red-lipped Dura-ki, and with it had gone hisbitter hatred and his desire for revenge.

  He jerked his mind back to the present, to Mytor.

  "And if I told you that it must be her life or yours?" Mytor wasasking him.

  Ransome's eyes widened. He sensed that Mytor's last question was not,an idle one. He leaned forward and asked:

  "How do you fit into this at all, Mytor?"

  "Easily. Once, ten years ago, you and the woman now aboard the _Hawkof Darion_ blasphemed together against the Temple of the Dark One, inDarion."

  "Go on," Ransome said.

  "When you landed here this afternoon the avenging priests were not farbehind you."

  "How did you--"

  "I have many contacts," Mytor purred. "I find them invaluable. But youare growing impatient, Mr. Ransome. I will be brief. I have contractedwith the priests of Darion to deliver you to them tonight for aconsiderable sum."

  "How did you know you would find me?"

  "I was given your description." He made a gesture that took in all theoccupants of the torch-lit room. "So many of the hunted, and thehaunted, come here to forget for an hour the things that pursue them.I was expecting you, Mr. Ransome."

  "If there is a large sum of money involved, I'm sure you'll make everyeffort to carry out your part of the bargain," Ransome observedironically.

  "I am a businessman, it is true. But in my dealings with the master ofthe _Hawk of Darion_ I have seen the woman and I have heard stories.It occurred to me that the priests would pay much more for the womanthan they would for you, and it seemed to me that a message from youmight coax her off the ship. After all, when one has been in love--"

  "That's enough." Ransome had risen to his feet. "I wonder if I couldkill you before your guards got to me."

  "Are you then so in love with death, Ransome?" The Venusian spokequickly. "Don't be a fool. It is a small thing, a woman's life--awoman who has betrayed you."

  Ransome stood silent, his arm halfway to his blaster. The woman hadbegun to dance again in the red glare of the torch.

  "There will be other women," the Venusian was murmuring. "The womanwho dances now, I will give her to you, to take with you in your newship."

  Ransome looked slowly from the glowing body of the woman to the guardsaround the walls, down into Mytor's confident face. His arm droppedaway from the blaster.

  "Any man--for a price." The Venusian's murmur was lost in the blare ofthe music. Ransome had eased his lean body back into the chair.

  * * * * *

  The night air was cold against Ransome's cheek when he went out anhour later, surrounded by Mytor's men. Yaroto's greenish moon wasoverhead now, but its pale light did not help him to see more clearly.It only made shadows in every doorway and twisting alley.

  Mytor's car was only a few feet away but before he could reach it hewas shoved aside by one of the Venusian's guards. At the same momentthe night flamed with the blue-yellow glare from a dozen blasters.Ransome raised his own weapon, staring into the shadows, seeking hisattackers.

  "That's our job. Get in," said one of the guards, wrenching open thecar door.

  Then the firing was over as suddenly as it had begun. The guardsclustered at the opening of an alley down the street. Mytor's driversat impassively in the front seat.

  When the guards returned one of them thrust something at Ransome,something hard and cold. He glanced at it. A long knife.

  There was no need to read the inscription on the hilt. He knew it byheart.

  "Death to him who defileth the Bed of the Dark One. Life to the Templeand City of Darion."

  Once Ransome would have pocketed the knife as a kind of grim keepsake.Now he only let it fall to the floor.

  In the brief, ghostly duel just over he had neither seen nor heard hisattackers. That added, somehow, to the horror of the thing.

  He shrugged off the thought, turning his mind to the details of theplan by which he would save his life.

  It was quite simple. Ransome had been in space long enough to knowwhere the crewmen went on a strange world. Half an hour later he satwith a gunner from the _Hawk of Darion_, in one of the gaudy pleasurehouses clustered on the fringe of the city near the spaceport and thedesert beyond.

  "Will you take the note to the Captain's woman?"

  The man squirmed, avoiding Ransome's ice-blue stare.

  "Captain killed the last man who looked at his woman," the gunnermuttered sullenly. "Flogged him to death."

  "I'm not asking you to look at her," Ransome reminded him.

  The gunner sat looking at the stack of Mytor's money piled on thetable before him. A woman drifted over.

  "Go away," Ransome said, without raising his eyes. He added anotherbill to the stack.

  "Let me see the note before I take it," the gunner demanded.

  "It would mean nothing to you." Ransome pushed a half-empty bottletoward the man, poured him out another drink.

  The man's hands were trembling with inner conflict as he measured thekilling lash against the stack of yellow Yarotian kiroons, and thepleasures it would buy him. He drank, dribbling a little of the winedown his grimy chin, and then returned to the subject of seeing thenote, with drunken persistence.

  "I got to see it first."

  "It's in a language you wouldn't--"

  "Let him see it," a new voice cut in. "Translate it for him, Mr.Ransome."

  * * * * *

  It was a woman's voice, cold and contemptuous. Ransome looked upquickly, and at first he didn't recognize her. The gunner never tookhis eyes from the stack of kiroons on the table.

  "Let him see how a man murders a woman to save his own neck."

  "You're supposed to be dancing at Mytor's place," Ransome said."That's your business; this is mine."

  He closed his hand over the gunner's wrist as the man reachedconvulsively for the money, menaced now by the angry woman.

  "Half now, the rest later." Ransome's eyes burned into the crewman's.The latter looked away. Ransome tightened his grip, and pain contortedthe gunner's features.

  "Look at me," Ransome said. "If you cross me you'll wish you could dieby flogging."

  The woman Mytor had called Irene was still standing by the table whenthe gunner had left with the note and his money.

  "Aren't you going to ask me to sit down?"

  "Certainly. Sit down."

  "I'd like a drink."

  She sipped her wine in silence and Ransome studied her by theflickering light of the candle burning on the table between them.

  She wore a simple street dress now, in contrast to the gaudy,revealing garments of the pleasure house women. The beauty of hersoft, unpainted lips, her golden skin and wide-set green eyes was morestriking now, seen at close range, than it had been in the smokycavern of Mytor's place.

  "What are you thinking now, Ransome?"

  The question was unexpected, and Ransome answered without forethought:"The Temple."

  "You studied for the priesthood of the Dark One yourself."

  "Did Mytor tell you that?"

  Irene nodded. The candlelight gave luster to her dark hair andrevealed the contours of her high, firm breasts.

  Ransome's pulse speeded up just looking at her. Then he saw that shewas regarding him as if he were something crawling in damp stone, andthere was bitterness in him.

  "There are things that even Mytor doesn't know, even omniscientMytor--"

  He checked himself
.

  "Well?"

  "Nothing."

  "You were going to tell me about how you are really a very honorableman. Why don't you? You have an hour before it will be time to betraythe woman from the _Hawk of Darion_."

  Ransome shrugged, and his voice returned her mockery.

  "If I told you that I had been an acolyte in the Temple of the DarkOne, and that I was condemned to death for blasphemy, committed forlove of a woman, would you like me better?"

  "I might."

  "Ten years ago," Ransome said. He talked, and the mighty walls of theTemple reared themselves around his mind,