The small room was dark but for the flickering light of a single ef-lamp that burned on the bare table between the two long rows of black-hooded figures. The thin dry air was surcharged with the tenseness of a tautly drawn cord ... a strangler's cord. A sentence of death had been passed in silence. Now, the executioners balloted, still in silence, to select from their number a leader.

The High Council of the Maldia was in session. Behind the dark, enigmatic sable masks and robes lurked all the might and hate of a proud, ancient and dying culture. The might of a warlike world's aristocracy. The hate that was the unreasoning, distilled essence of a doomed world's bitterness....

Beneath the black cowl that shadowed his face young Telis of Lars' eyes showed fierce pride as member after member pointed silently toward his end of the table. It seemed that the vote would be overwhelmingly in his favor, and a tremor of anticipation ran through him. At the far end of the board he could see his rival candidate's eyes glittering furiously. The Maldia would not be led by Brand, that much was certain. The assembled nobles were quite plainly repudiating his leadership for that of the young Lord of Lars.

Outside the tower room, the icy wind shrieked and gamboled through the crenels of the ancient fortress like a harbinger of doom. The draughts set the candle flame to dancing crazily, and long shadows leapt from wall to wall.

Telis stretched his long legs out under the table. To him, the voting seemed unnecessarily prolonged and ritualistic, but he knew better than to voice opposition to customs that had been accepted in the Maldia since long before the Laurrs, the dictator-kings who took the name of the very planet for themselves, had driven the society underground.

The young warrior was forced to admit that ritual and trappings were an important part of the superstitious hold the Maldia had on the great masses of Laurr. And, with the populace cowed, anything was possible. Even the Laurr himself would not care to face the unanimous disapproval of this masked hierarchy. Too many Laurrs, down through the aeons of the planet's history, had fallen before the blades of Maldia assassins.

Telis watched the glittering eyes that peered out from behind the peaked mask that hid Prince Brand's handsome face. The mart knew he was defeated, and rage seemed to surround him like a malign auriole. Brand would never be satisfied with the deputy command that would be his for having been second in the balloting. The man wanted full authority, not command of troops in the field as Telis had had. Brand was far too concerned with his own safety for that; he wanted command of the striking force of assassins that would murder the handful of invaders out in the desert. The victory over a few scientists from another world would give Brand the renown he craved and at negligible risk, for all his dark talk about mystery weapons and his pleas for caution.

The only need for caution that Telis could see was the possible intervention of the Temple or the Laurr. And the Temple knew nothing. And the Laurr could be handled ... by Telis.

Telis looked around him, wishing the masked nobles would have done with it. It would not be a safe thing to have the Temple learn that the Maldia met in Telis' own palace quarters. He noted with satisfaction that the voting had ended.

The shrieking wind outside died suddenly, leaving a thick silence.

A black figure arose from either side of the table. The one on the right turned toward Telis, and its voice had a strange and disembodied timbre in the stillness.

"Telis of Lars," it said, "you lead."

Telis inclined his head in acceptance. Taciturnity was part of the ancient tradition of the Maldia.

The figure on the left turned toward Brand. "Brand, Prince of Laurr, you follow."

Brand heaved himself to his feet. "I protest this insult!" he said thickly. "Why am I to follow him? He is not even of royal birth!"

The robed figure on the left seemed to tense. Its voice sounded suddenly almost metallic. "You follow," it repeated deliberately.

Brand stood irresolutely, two solid rows of shadowed faces turned toward him. Then Telis spoke up softly, almost casually.

"A challenge, Brand, to decide?"

"I follow," muttered Brand, sinking into his chair sullenly.

Telis smiled to himself. If ever a coward like Brand should pick up a flung challenge, surely the Water Goddess would throw down the moons!

Slowly, the hooded men filed from the room, leaving Telis alone. For a moment Brand paused by the door, and Telis could see that he fingered his sword hilt under the sable robes. But he stood so, glaring at Telis, for only a minute. Then he was gone.

From the darkness of the courtyard beneath the tower window came the sound of a whistle, and Lord Telis relaxed. The bribed guardsman's signal indicated that the last member of the Maldia had mounted his sith and was safely away.

Telis felt a stirring of pride. Any victory was a pleasing thing to him; but tonight's smashing triumph over Brand was a thing the renegade princeling would long remember! The Maldia had chosen to forget that he, Telis, came only from the lower nobility.

His position as Captain-General of the Laurr's armies, as well as the real affection the ruler had for him, had been a large factor in the selection, Telis knew. The Maldia was certain that the old Laurr was fond enough of his young Captain-General to overlook the breach of faith contemplated for the morning....

Telis doffed his robes and dressed himself with care. Always fastidious about his appearance, he knew that this night his dress must be impeccable. The Laurr of Laurr was very particular about such things.

With a last hitch at his jewelled harness, Telis stationed himself before the polished onyx mirror. The image that gazed calmly back at him from its dark surface was sufficiently imposing, he reflected, even for the Laurr of Laurr. He was tall and well-knit; the war harness, bright with gems, hung low on his hips; his long legs were bare, and his chest covered only by the crossed straps that supported his weapons.

The black sith-leather was studded with battle-decorations. It would be well, Telis reasoned, to remind the Laurr of his many services to the throne. Tacitly, perhaps, but nonetheless firmly.

All the gems won in the Guski campaigns and in the last Water War were there, as was the golden cross of the Laurr's own Knighthood ... presented to Telis by the hand whose blessing he planned to seek this very night.

Glancing at his chronometer, Telis turned away from the mirror. Through the high, narrow window of his palace quarters, the light of the nearer moon streamed in golden glory, shaming the feeble light of the ef-lamp. Telis stepped to the window, his gaze seeking the low hills beyond the still, shallow waters of the Grand Canal. The beauty of the night caught at his breast, for, even as he watched, the great orb of the farther moon was rising sedately to add its light to the already fulsome glory of her racing sister.

Below and across the palace grounds, the flickering lights of the city spread like a web of living beads in the moonlight.

As always, Telis felt a rush of pride as he contemplated the beauty of his world. A great sadness filled him then, for he knew that such beauty could not last much longer. Soon now, the sun would rise on a planet of death....

Telis shuddered and turned away. The beauty of the night faded, leaving only reality. And reality was stark and deadly on Laurr. The water was vanishing, and the great plains that had once been green and fertile were now oxidized wastelands. Lars, far to the north, was deserted now, for the canal had silted up and life had become unbearable. And now the great deserts of iron oxide stood at the very shores of the Grand Canal, and what did flow down from the pole was barely enough to keep the watercourse free of red silt.

Aeons ago, before the great Wars that had almost wrecked the planet, the ancients had seen the drought coming. They had known that the air and the water would steadily unite with Laurr's thirsty iron, leaving the planet barren and desiccated beyond belief.

They had tried to plan for that day and had built the great waterways as part of their conservation program. Other projects had been started; mysterious power plants far out in the deserts with walls of foot-thick pund had been built. But somehow, nothing good had come from these mysterious Temples. The first of the Ten Great Water Wars had begun even then, and the warring people of the planet had demanded weapons from these strange plants.

For many generations the engineer-priests had refused the pleas and demands, but, as the steadily diminishing water supplies had caused war after war after war, they relented.

From the pund-lined Temples had come a steady flow of ghastly weapons. Weapons that left Laurr's cities shattered piles of rubbish to be covered by the drifting sands. Weapons that had destroyed forever the once flourishing culture that might have saved the world from its inexorable doom.

The secrets of the past were forgotten ... or covered with legendary dross. But the wars went on and on and on.

Telis knew, staring out across the rusty sands, that Laurr was doomed to a quick death. It would not come in his lifetime ... but soon ... soon....

And then the Tellurians had come! To gloat and exploit. To steal the iron of the deserts and drain away the last of the planet's resources to their wantonly wealthy world! Even the Laurr of Laurr had given them safe-conduct ... on the basis that their expedition proved some of the Temple's favored dogma concerning the origin of the race!

Weakness! thought Telis savagely. It fills us as life slips away from our planet. But it would not be so! The ancient, dreaded Maldia would see to that! If Laurr must die, then at least she could die upright and untrammeled by ghoulish invaders!

In sudden fury, Telis snatched up his cloak and strode from the room. The jewelled glyph of the Water Goddess, Mother of Laurr, gleamed fiercely for a moment on the hilt of his short-sword in the feeble light as Telis sought the long winding ramp that led to the lower levels and the audience chamber of the Laurr of Laurr.

Along endless corridors, ef-lit and lined with rigid guardsmen, Lord Telis of Lars made his way. Underfoot, the ever-present drift of reddish sand gritted as he walked.

Turning into the main passageway that led to the inner courtyard, Telis heard the sound of his name ... softly spoken, but demanding. Stopping, he looked about him. A dark-robed figure beckoned to him from the shadow of a huge stone buttress. It was Gorla, First Cycle Priest of the Temple, and Telis' long standing friend at court. His eyes were sombre in his round, good-humored face.

"I have met you just in time. You are on your way to see the Laurr, friend Telis?"

Telis nodded. "Of course. I am already keeping him waiting. I'll see you in the morning, friend Gorla." He made a move to slip by the young Priest and be on his way.

"A moment, Telis!" Gorla's voice was suddenly sharp. "You are about to ask the Laurr to break his word to the outlanders, are you not?"

Telis' eyes narrowed. "Perhaps ..."

Gorla laid a hand on his arm. "Telis, I have known you for many haads. As children we played together on the fields of Lars. Believe me, I wish nothing but the best for you. Why are you involved with this bloodthirsty madness of the Maldia?"

Telis withdrew his arm as though the Priest had stung him. Only the strength of a life-long friendship kept him from striking Gorla, for the Priest's words had hit a deep-seated prejudice. The Maldia was of the nobility ... and Gorla was a Commoner.

Gorla went on slowly, emphasizing his words carefully. "Dorliss knows of your plan to break the Laurr's pledge and attack the Tellurian camp."

Telis stiffened. How was it possible? He had told no one!

The Priest divined his thoughts. "The Temple has ways, Telis, of knowing such things. The Maldia can bribe a guard ... and the Temple can bribe him again. You should have thought of that tonight."

Telis drew himself back. "So?"

"You are foolish, my friend. And it is the duty of the Temple to see that Laurr does not suffer for your foolishness. The Maldia is a fearful thing, Telis, a creation of senseless hate. Why do you hate the Tellurians? You have never even seen one. They are but men like ourselves, and they bring gifts of great promise to Laurr. It is not fit that such as you should be joined with a renegade like Prince Brand ... a craven and a lying usurper ... and for the purpose of attacking those who have come across to seek knowledge and friendship!"

Telis pondered. What Gorla said about Brand was largely true. The man was untrustworthy and underhanded, a blind seeker of power. But prejudices of caste and upbringing were too much to combat. And to renege now would be to mark himself a coward in a world that lived by the sword. It was unthinkable!

"You, Gorla," Telis said pointedly, "should limit yourself to scientific and theological matters and leave matters of state and policy to those better equipped to handle them."

Gorla shook his head sadly. "Foolish friend!" Then his voice took on the unmistakable tone of command. "In the name of, and by the authority of the Temple, I demand that you abandon your projected attack on the Tellurian camp."

Telis threw back his head and laughed. "Demand, is it? I know of no plan to attack the foreigners, friend Priest, now or in the future! Now kindly step aside. I cannot make the Laurr of Laurr wait on me while I argue senseless points with you...."

Gorla sounded defeated. "Then you refuse?"

Telis frowned at his friend. "Of course, I refuse! And you may carry that message back to Dorliss ... if there is such a place!"

With that he turned away, but not before Gorla laid his hand on Telis' arm and said: "Then forgive me, old friend...."

Telis wondered at that. Forgive? Forgive what? Then other matters forced that question from his mind. So the Temple knew of the Maldia's plan to massacre the aliens. To what extent, he wondered, would the Temple go in striving for its own inscrutable purpose to save the Tellurian scientists? And why? In spite of himself, Telis could not suppress a shudder, for the Temple was powerful ... perhaps the most powerful thing remaining on the desiccated planet of Laurr.

The ancient order of the Temple Priests dated to far before the Ten Water Wars that had so devastated the globe with their atomic fury. Its beginnings were lost in the dim mists of antiquity, even antedating the building of the waterways. The membership was perhaps the one body selected for any purpose on Laurr without consideration of family or background, and this fact accounted for the fierce loyalty of such able young Commoners as Gorla.

The long wars and the struggle for survival had destroyed much of the ancient science, and what remained lay within the jurisdiction of the Temple. As it so often happens in times of great stress, science on the world of Laurr had taken on the vestments of religion in order to survive. A benevolent, scientific hierarchy, the Priests of the Seven Cycles spent their cloistered hours delving into the great knowledge of the ancients, seeking the answers to riddles solved long ago and forgotten in the fratricidal wars that were the direct result of the dwindling water supply. Ostensibly, the Temple conducted the world-wide worship of the Water Goddess, principal deity in the Laurrian Pantheon, but actually the Priests were scientists striving frantically to salvage what little they could from the wreckage of the ancient civilization on a doomed and quarrelsome planet.

All this Telis of Lars knew only vaguely. He was a soldier, and little concerned with the ins and outs of the scientific theocracy of the Temple. His life up to now had been spent largely in wars and tourneys, in love-making and the less exacting pastimes of the hedonist. Only the coming of the Tellurians had stirred him to take a more direct part in the doings of the court circles, for above all he loved Laurr, and in the outlanders Telis saw the final, insupportable insult to his beloved, prostrate home-world.

The government of the Laurr of Laurr and the Temple seldom clashed. Each remained within its proper sphere, and both were content. But into this peculiar age-old arrangement the Tellurian spaceship had fallen like a disrupting bolt from the sky. And men—men like the men of Laurr—had emerged from the vessel ... seeming to prove the Temple's much-doubted hypothesis that both Laurr and the planet the aliens called Terra had been colonized by a great race of interstellar travelers. How much more could be proved or done with the Tellurians' aid remained to be seen. The Temple was already calling them the Redeemers of Laurr, and through its good offices a safe-conduct had been granted by the Laurr of Laurr himself.

They had come seeking iron. They wanted to mine and later, perhaps, to colonize, though Laurr was uncomfortable for them. But this the Maldia found unthinkable. The Tellurians were barbarians, and the ancient nobles of Laurr raged at their intrusion.

Telis found himself among these objectors. For many haads, Laurr had known of its approaching doom and it wished to die, Telis thought, as it had lived—proud and unconquered. The Tellurians were outsiders who had no place on the barren face of his Laurr ... and it was Telis' intention to drive them away or destroy them. For this he had been chosen leader of the attack that the Maldia planned to mount in the morning.

Already agents had been sent out to agitate among the degenerate tribes of the desert—the cannibal Guski—and the Maldia was assured of at least four thousand tribesmen in arms in return for food and plunder. The power of the Maldia, five hundred sith-mounted nobles, added to the mass of Guski seemed more than enough to handle a small scientific expedition from space.

Now, as he left the guest wing of the palace and strode across the dark courtyard that separated him from the household quarters of the ruler's family, Telis smiled to himself. The intruding Tellurians were due for a shock. Their safe-conduct would be voided within the hour and Laurr would be free of them before the sun set again!

He was almost across the yard and into the gate of the household wing when something made him pause. He had the feeling of being watched ... followed. His sharp eyes swept the whole of the courtyard. It was walled and heavily planted with desert shrubs so that his inspection told him nothing. He shrugged and turned again toward the gate.

One step he took, and no more. From overhead came the low whirring of an air-sled's idling motor. He stopped short, searching the sky for the craft. A sled in the air low over the Laurr's palace at this time of night could mean nothing good.

The sharp clank of metal behind him made him swing around, his sword hissing from its scabbard. Three hooded figures were almost upon him, naked steel in their hands. Telis thought wildly of calling for aid, and then he realized that these men would never dare to attack him if they had not either bribed or killed the household guards. Instinctively, he thought of Brand. Was this the renegade's doing? By killing him and spiriting his body away, Brand could contend before the Maldia that Telis had lost courage at the last moment and fled rather than lead them in an overt act against the Tellurians....

There was no more time for thought, for the three men were upon him. He slipped his second sword free and stood facing them, searching for some hint as to their identity. Overhead the air-sled hovered, waiting....

With a cry, Telis lunged forward and caught one of the attackers on his point. The man doubled up and fell to his knees as his two companions closed in. The courtyard now echoed the ring of steel on steel, and the labored breathing of men fighting.

Telis fought fiercely. He was fighting for his life—and for what was even more important on Laurr—his honor as a warrior.

His blade wove a deadly, glittering web in the darkness, but his two assailants closed in steadily. The whirring sound of the air-sled was nearer now, and Telis glanced upward to see if he could catch a glimpse of the aircraft. His heart sank.

The ship was a dark blot across the stars, but he could see that a rope ladder hung down into the court and more men were pouring down, swords in hand.

Desperately, Telis pressed forward, trying to rush the attackers and gain a brief respite. One of the men feinted in the low lines and followed with a thrust at the head that caught Telis a glancing blow on the temple and set the stars to dancing before his eyes.

The fellow rushed in eagerly and Telis heard his companion hiss: "Careful, you fool!"

Telis' attack stalled under the concerted rush of the masked man, and he was forced to retreat until his bare back touched the roughness of the courtyard wall. There could be no further retreat.

The assailants separated now, so that Telis was forced to strike wildly from side to side to avert being hit. His sword made a glittering arc as he parried a near thrust and a lightning riposte pierced the swordarm of his nearest attacker.

Before the others who had dropped from the sled could close in on him, Telis whirled and ran along the base of the wall. If he could reach the gate of the household wing he would be safe, for no assassins would dare follow him into the inner sanctum of the Laurr himself.

He heard a voice shouting hoarsely in the darkness, and other voices replying angrily, impatiently.

"We've lost him!"

"The devil's wounded Marl and Varo!"

"Find him, you fools! He must be taken."

Telis ran breathlessly along the wall, hoping against hope that the gate would not be covered. It was a vain hope. As he broke out of the shrubbery, the shouts began again and he was forced to retreat into the shelter of a towering desert plant.

He waited there, breath coming in long rasping gasps, and his head singing from the blow he had taken.

With pounding heart he listened to the attackers beating the bushes for him and shouting commands and advice to one another. More men must still be coming down from the air-sled, for there were fully ten in the dark courtyard now.

"He can't have gotten far!"

"See that the gate is covered—"

"How the young devil does fight!"

"Pierce that bush there! I saw something move!"

Telis tried to smother his labored breathing as the group drew nearer to his hiding place. His hands cradled his two swords lovingly as the searchers spread out into a semicircle and moved steadily towards him.

Telis tensed himself to leap. Within seconds, they would be upon him and assassins on Laurr showed no mercy, particularly to one who had wounded two of their craft. He doubled his legs under him and waited.

"There he is!"

Telis burst from hiding and braced himself for the rush. His back was once again against the wall and this time, he knew, there would be no escape.

A glittering circle of naked swords surrounded him and he lashed out furiously, driving the attackers back by the main force of his charge.

Then it was that a stray beam of light from the closely guarded gate caught a jewelled glyph on the harness of one of the assassins and Telis' heart froze. The insigne was the Sword and Atom—the ensign of the Secular Guard of the Holy Temple!

The disclosure was like a blow. It was Gorla rather than Brand, who was trying to kill him! The bitter understanding seemed to sap his strength. When he felt the stun-gun's tingling impact, it was almost a relief. Blackness came ... darker than the primeval night, and he felt himself falling....