Bitterness made a wry taste in his mouth. Either she was one of the Aesir, or she served them. Served them well. A knife in the heart was the only answer he had for her, and he meant to give her that edged answer if he lived. But she was so very lovely....
Slowly the veil of darkness lifted. He saw a face he had seen before--the harsh, seamed features of the burly Earthman in the pit. And beyond him, the slim Martian girl. All motionless, standing like statues beside him ... beside him! For Stuart was one of them now. He was in the pit, with the other captives.
Sensation came back slowly. With it came a tingling, a warm vibration along his spine ... about his throat ... inside his brain. He could not move, but at the corner of his range of vision flamed a crimsonness--the cloak. He still wore it.
He wondered if the other captives could see him, if their minds were as active as his in their congealed bodies. Or whether the chill of deathlike silence held their brains along with their frozen limbs.
A slow, volcanic fury began to glow within him. Kari--traitor and murderess! Was she Aesir? Was she Earth-born? And that black-cloaked, cowled creature ... which was not real. Another projector of the Aesir, as the giants had been?
Memory of Kari's phrase came back to Stuart now. And with it, as though he had somehow unbarred a locked gate, opened it a mere crack, came a--a whispering.
Not audible. Faint, faraway, like the shadow of a wind rustling ghosts of autumn leaves, the murmur rose and fell ... calling him.
The scarlet cloak moved ... writhed ... flowed more closely about him. Fainter grew the voices.
Stuart strained after them. His soul sprang up ... reaching toward those friendly, utterly inhuman whispers that came from nowhere.
A dull lethargy numbed him. The cloak drew tighter....
He ignored it. Deep in the citadel of his mind, he made himself receptive, all his being focused on that--that strange calling from beyond.
"_Derek Stuart. Can you hear us? Answer!_"
His stiff lips could not speak, but his thoughts formed an answer. And, rising and falling as though the frequency of that incredible telepathy pulsed and changed continually, the message came--
"We have lost. You have lost too, Stuart. But we will stay with you--we _must_ stay now--and perhaps your death will be easier because of that...."