'Come and kill me,'he pleaded. 'Just come and try.'

But the Northmen had no eyes for him.

Chapter Twelve

His face fired up with hate and madness, the nameless sword quivering before him, he watched them back away, toward the chamber of the brain. So he kicked the stiff, bleeding face of their dead captain. He crouched like a wolf, and spat: he presented them with lewd challenges, and filthy insults.

But they ignored him, and stared beyond him, their attitudes fearful; and finally he followed the direction of their gaze.

Coming on from the direction of the door, moving swiftly through the milky light, was a company of men.

They were tall and straight, clothed in cloaks of black and green, of scarlet and the misleading colour of dragonfly armour. Their dark hair fell to their shoulders about long, white faces, and their boots rang on the obsidian floor. Like walkers out of Time, they swept past him, and he saw that their weapons were grim and strange; and that their eyes held ruin for the uncertain wolves of the North.

At their head strutted Tomb the dwarf.

His axe was slung jauntily over his thick shoulder, his hair caught back for battle. He was whistling through his hormible teeth, but he quieted when he saw the corpse of Birkin Grif.

With a great shout he sprang forward, unlimbering his weapon. He fell upon the retreating Northmen, and all his strange and beautiful crew followed him. Their curious blades hummed and sang.

Like a man displaced amid his own dreams, Cromis watched the dwarf plant himself securely on his buckled, corded legs and swing his axe in huge circles round his head; he watched the strange company as they flickered like steel flames through the Northmen. And when he was sure that they had prevailed, he threw down the nameless sword.

His madness passed. Cradling the head of his dead friend, he wept.

When Methvet Nian discovered him there, he had regained a measure of his self-possession. He was shivering, but he would not take her cloak.

'I am glad to see you safe, my lady,'he said, and she led him to the brain chamber. He left his sword. He saw no use for it.

In the centre of the chamber, a curious and moving choreography was taking place.

The brain danced, its columns of light and shadow shifting, shifting; innumerable subtle graduations of shape and tint, and infinitely various rhythms.

And among those rods and pillars, thirteen slim figures moved, their garments on fire with flecks of light, their long white faces rapt.

The brain sang its single sustained chord, the feet of the dancers sped, the vaulting dome of diamond threw back images of their ballet.

Off to one side of the display sat Tomb the dwarf, a lumpen, earthbound shape, his chin on his hand, a smile on his ugly face, his eyes following every shade of motion. His axe lay by his side.

'They are beautiful,'said tegeus-Cromis. 'It seems a pity that a homicidal dwarf should.discover such beauty. Why do they dance in that fashion?'

Tomb chuckled.

'To say that I appreciated that would be a lie. I suspect they have a method of communication with the brain many times more efficient than crude passes of the hand. In a sense, they are the brain at this moment -'

'Who are they, Tomb?'

'They are men of the Afternoon Cultures, my friend. They are the Resurmected Men.'

Cromis shook his head. The dancers swayed, their cloaks a whirl of emerald and black. 'You cannot expect me to understand any of this.'

Tomb leapt to his feet. Suddenly, he danced away from Cromis and the Queen in a queer little parody of the ballet of the brain, an imitation full of sadness and humour. He clapped his hands and cackled.

'Cromis,'he said, 'it was a master-stroke. Lmsten -'

He sat down again.

'I lied to Trinor. Nothing was simpler than dealing with the geteit chemosit. Those golems stopped operating twenty minutes after I had entered this room. Wherever they were, they froze, their mechanisms ceased to function. For all I know, they are rusting. Cellur taught me that.

'What he did not tell me was that a dialogue could be held with the brain: that, I learnt for myself, in the next twenty minutes. Then -'Cromis, Cellur was wrong. One vital flaw in his reasoning led to what you have seen today. He regarded the chemosit as simple destroyers: but the Northmen were nearer to the truth when they called them the brain-stealers. The chemosit are harvesters.

'It was their function in the days of the Afternoon Cultures not to prevent the resurrection of a warrior, but to bring the contents of his skull here, or to a similar centre, and give it into care of the artificial brain. This applied equally to a dead friend or a foe actually slain by the chemosit - I think they saw war in a different way to ourselves, perhaps as a game.

'When Canna Moidart denied the chemosit their full function by using them solely as fighters, she invited destruction.

'Now. Each of the “windows” in this place is in reality a tank of sustaining fluid, in which is suspended the brain of a dead man. Upon the injection of a variety of other fluids and nutrients, that brain may be stimulated to reform its departed owner.

'On the third day of our captivity here, the artificial brain reconstructed Fimbruthil and Lonath, those with the emerald cloaks.

'On the fourth day, Bellin, and Mader-Monad, and Sleth. See how those three dance! And yesterday, the rest. The brain then linked me to their minds. They agreed to help me. Today, we put our plan into effect.

'Twelve corridors lead from this chamber, like the spokes of a wheel miles in diameter: the Resurrected men were born in the north-western corridor. At a given signal, they issued from their wombs, crept here, and slew the guards Trinor had left when he went to his death. The fourteen of us stepped into the light-colums. From there, by a property of the brain-complex, we were – shifted – to the desert outside.

'We waited there for Trinor and his men. By then, of course, he was… otherwise involved. We eventually re-entered the bunker, and arrived in time to save you from yourself.'

tegeus-Cromis smiled stiffly.

'That was well done, Tomb. And what now? Will you send them back to sleep?'

The dwarf frowned.

'Cromis! We will have an army of them! Even now, they are awakening the brain fully. We will build a new Viriconium together, the Methven and the Reborn Men, side by side -'

The diamond walls of the chamber shone and glittered. The brain hummed. An arctic coldness descended on the mind of tegeus-Cromis. He looked at his hands.

'Tomb,'he said: 'You are aware that this will destroy the Empire just as surely as Canna Moidart destroyed it?'

The dwarf came hurriedly to his feet.

'What?'

'They are too beautiful, Tomb; they are too accomplished. If you go on with this, there will be no new Empire – instead, they will absorb us: and after a millennium's pause, the Afternoon Cultures will resume their long sway over the Earth.

'No malice will be involved. Indeed, they may thank us many times over for bringing them back to the world. But, as you have said yourself, they have a view of life that is alien to us; and do not forget that it was them who made the waste around us.'

As he gazed at the perfect bodies of the Resurrected Men, a massive sadness, a brutal sense of incompleteness came upon him. He studied the honest face of the dwarf before him, but could find no echo of his own emotion – only puzzlement, and, beneath that, a continulng elation.

'Tomb, I want no part of this.'

As he walked toward the arch from which they had issued, his head downcast so that he should not see that queer dance -so that he should not be ensnared and fascinated by its inhumanity – Methvet Nian, Queen Jane of Viriconium, barred his way. Her violet eyes pierced him.