Night Winds by Karl Edward Wagner Page B

giant reeled, but stood erect. His fur garments were shredded, dark and sticky. Blood flowed so freely as to shroud the depth and extent of his wounds; flaps of flesh hung ragged, and bone glistened yellow as he moved.
    He groaned as he reached the throne and slumped down with his back braced against it. Kane found his senses clear enough to stand and knelt beside the stricken giant. Deftly his hands explored the other's wounds, sought vainly to stanch the bright spurting blood from the sabre gouges. But Kane was veteran of too many battles not to know his wounds were mortal.
    Dwassllir grinned gamely, his face pale beneath splashed gore. "That, Kane, is how my ancestors overcame the great beasts of Earth's dawn."
    "No giant ever fought a creature like this," Kane swore, "nor killed it bare-handed!"
    The giant shrugged weakly. "You think not, manling? But you don't know the legends of our race, Kane. And the legends are truth, I know that now! Fire and Ice! Those were heroic days!"
    Kane looked about the cavern, then bent to retrieve a fallen circle of gold. The rubies gleamed like Dwassllir's life blood; the crown was heavy in his hands. And though there was a fortune in his grasp, Kane no longer wanted King Brotemllain's crown.
    "This is yours now," he muttered, and placed the crown upon Dwassllir's nodding brow.
    The giant's head came erect again, and there was fierce pride in his face--and sadness. "I might have led them back to those lost days of glory!" he whispered. Then: "But there'll be another of my race, perhaps--another who will share my vision of the great age!"
    He signed for Kane to leave him. Already his eyes looked upon things beyond this lonely cavern in a desolate waste. "That was an age to live in!" he breathed hoarsely. "An age of heroesl"
    Kane somberly rose to his feet. "A great race, a heroic age--it's true," he acknowledged softly. "But I think the last of its heroes has passed."
THE DARK MUSE
Prologue
    Lightning colors, whining, whirling dirge of sonic pain, coalesced to ecstasy. More dimly now, the tones muted, submerged. Form returned, images of imprisoned light. Scintillant shapes that shimmered with the siren melody, colors of piercing brilliance, sparkles of sound shivering through his senses. Lancinations of unendurable ecstasy ravened through his consciousness, starbursts of warring sensory impulses that slipped once more to coherent phenomena, an instant before his mind shattered to follow into final chaos.
    Lustrous figures of nude beauty formed pirouetting patterns of dazzling perfection. For a timeless space he marveled upon their kaleidoscopic resplendency, his consciousness merged within the coruscant mosaic of their dance. Their dance, the beauty of their dance... soulwrenching wonder that staved off the shrill voices of pain, of terror that yammered upon the fringes of his awareness. An infinity of goddesses--or numberless images of a goddess--weaving through the glacial mists of throbbing color.
    Now he understood that they were but infinite reflections of the one goddess--the goddess of beauty, shimmering upon all the mirrors of the cosmos. He desired to behold the true image of this beauty, and his spirit soared through the swirling patterns, in search of the one true image. Time elapsed. Like a mote of interstellar debris drawn by the compellent attraction of a dark star, he fell unerringly toward the central focus of the ceaseless shifting labyrinth.
    At the heart of the vortex of pulsing color his quest was ended. Over the true image of beauty his awareness descended. He gazed upon the glowing porcelain of the goddess's perfect flesh, creamy majesty of unblemished form that radiated a warm luster of indescribable color. Her breasts were cones of floral delicacy, her hips dark with mystery, her limbs soft witchery as she pirouetted through the whirling dance. She saw him. The fierce welcome of her scarlet smile, the burning summons of her violet eyes invited him to share her