Chapter 1

There was a boy-God, sleeping through
eternity. And there were his “Stone of
Life” and the androids he had created
of matter and energy. And there was a
world that was to die from the
machinations of the androids’ diabolic
minds. There were Mouse and Ciaran to
stem the death-flood—two mortals fighting
the immortals’ plans for conquest.

Mouse stirred the stew in the small iron pot. There wasn’t much of it. She sniffed and said:

“You could have stolen a bigger joint. We’ll go hungry before the next town.”

“Uh huh,” Ciaran grunted lazily.

Anger began to curl in Mouse’s eyes.

“I suppose it’s all right with you if we run out of food,” she said sullenly.

Ciaran leaned back comfortably against a moss-grown boulder and watched her with lazy grey eyes. He liked watching Mouse. She was a head shorter than he, which made her very short indeed, and as thin as a young girl. Her hair was black and wild, as though only wind ever combed it. Her eyes were black, too, and very bright. There was a small red thief’s brand between them. She wore a ragged crimson tunic, and her bare arms and legs were as brown as his own.

Ciaran grinned. His lip was scarred, and there was a tooth missing behind it. He said, “It’s just as well. I don’t want you getting fat and lazy.”

Mouse, who was sensitive about her thinness, said something pungent and threw the wooden plate at him. Ciaran drew his shaggy head aside enough to let it by and then relaxed, stroking the harp on his bare brown knees. It began to purr softly.

Ciaran felt good. The heat of the sunballs that floated always, lazy in a reddish sky, made him pleasantly sleepy. And after the clamor and crush of the market squares in the border towns, the huge high silence of the place was wonderful.

He and Mouse were camped on a tongue of land that licked out from the Phrygian hills down into the coastal plains of Atlantea. A short cut, but only gypsies like themselves ever took it. To Ciaran’s left, far below, the sea spread sullen and burning, cloaked in a reddish fog.

To his right, also far below, were the Forbidden Plains. Flat, desolate, and barren, reaching away and away to the up-curving rim of the world, where Ciaran’s sharp eyes could just make out a glint of gold; a mammoth peak reaching for the sky.

Mouse said suddenly, “Is that it, Kiri? Ben Beatha, the Mountain of Life.”

Ciaran struck a shivering chord from the harp. “That’s it.”

“Let’s eat,” said Mouse.

“Scared?”

“Maybe you want me to go back! Maybe you think a branded thief isn’t good enough for you! Well I can’t help where I was born or what my parents were—and you’d have a brand on your ugly face too, if you hadn’t just been lucky!”

She threw the ladle.

This time her aim was better and Ciaran didn’t duck quite in time. It clipped his ear. He sprang up, looking murderous, and started to heave it back at her. And then, suddenly, Mouse was crying, stamping up and down and blinking tears out of her eyes.

“All right, I’m scared! I’ve never been out of a city before, and besides...” She looked out over the silent plain, to the distant glint of Ben Beatha. “Besides,” she whispered, “I keep thinking of the stories they used to tell—about Bas the Immortal, and his androids, and the grey beasts that served them. And about the Stone of Destiny.”

Ciaran made a contemptuous mouth. “Legends. Old wive’s tales. Songs to give babies a pleasant shiver.” A small glint of avarice came into his grey eyes. “But the Stone of Destiny—it’s a nice story, that one. A jewel of such power that owning it gives a man rule over the whole world...”

He squinted out across the barren plain. “Some day,” he said, softly, “maybe I’ll see if that one’s true.”

“Oh, Kiri.” Mouse came and caught his wrists in her small strong hands. “You wouldn’t. It’s forbidden—and no one that’s gone into the Forbidden Plains has ever come back.”

“There’s always a first time.” He grinned. “But I’m not going now, Mousie. I’m too hungry.”

She picked up the plate silently and ladled stew into it and set it down. Ciaran laid his harp down and stretched—a tough, wiry little man with legs slightly bandy and a good-natured hard face. He wore a yellow tunic even more ragged than Mouse’s.