She held her head very high. She had earned the right to hold it so.
She finished quietly, “I have come a long way. I will not turn back now.”
“Ciara.” Stark came and stood before her. “I am talking to you as a fighting man, an equal. There may be power behind the Gates of Death, I do not know. But this I have seen—madness, horror, an evil that is beyond our understanding.
“I think you will not accuse me of cowardice. And yet I would not go into that pass for all the power of all the kings of Mars!”
Once started, he could not stop. The full force of that dark vision of the talisman swept over him again in memory. He came closer to her, driven by the need to make her understand.
“Yes, I have the talisman! And I have had a taste of its purpose. I think Ban Cruach left it as a warning, s
